


[S] ==> Form Voltron

by Graphite_Katanas



Category: Homestuck, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambassador Noir, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Blobs, Blue is VERY protective, Bluesprite, Body Modification, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Dave and Lance are tentative bros, Doomed Timelines, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hawaiian Hunk (Voltron), Homesick Lance (Voltron), Homestuck and Voltron should be friends, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance gets bio luminescent, Lance is a player now, Lance meets Dave and Rose on Derse, Land of Depth and Currents, Langst, M/M, New Galra tech, Original Aliens - Freeform, Protective Blue, Rose is out of Lance's league, Rose is savage, Space Battles, Space Shenanigans, Swearing (a lot), Team Bonding, Voltronstuck, because why not, dead daves, hurt!lance, lots of space shenanigans, more tags to come, probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-10-14 13:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10537383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graphite_Katanas/pseuds/Graphite_Katanas
Summary: Long story short, Lance's strong connection with Blue makes him more susceptible to space shenanigans. As the Castle passes through residual temporal energy from the Beta kids' Scratch, Lance is able to meet Dave, Rose and others on the planet Derse in his dreams. He then is able to enter Sburb as a player, and fun but heavy sci-fi drama ensues.*UPDATES SPORADICALLY NOW*





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not prompted i just want voltron and homestuck to interact :))))))) if you agree lemme know in the comments, if theres enough interest i will keep the updates coming
> 
> I just love the idea of lance (and potentially other members of team voltron) meeting the players and fun times ensuing :P forgive me for my sins

Chapter 1 

Lance pinched the bridge of his nose, scowling at Keith as a thin stream of blood ran across his upper lip. 

“Not fair Keith! I thought we said no face shots!”

“My hand slipped”

“Punches don’t just slip Keith! Seriously, this could have been disastrous, how am I supposed to woo the ladies if I have a busted-ass face?”

Keith sighed, “Honestly, I say it’s an improvement”

Lance started to pull a comically angry face, but winced as the expression increased the aching pain in his nose. “Oh yeah? Well, your mullet is an improvement on...on...ON YOUR UGLINESS!”

“Wow, nice come back, you should write a book or something”

Before Lance could lunge forward and tackle Keith to the floor of the training room, a large set of arms wrapped around the lanky teen, effectively holding him in place.

“Oh come on, Hunk! You can’t seriously believe that him punching me in the face is an effective way of training-”

“-No, I don’t. But Lance, buddy, going for a kick to the groin in the first place is a dick move. Literally.”

Lance grumbled quietly to himself in Spanish, and ceased struggling. Hunk had heard a fair bit of Lance’s swearing back at the Garrison, enough for him to recognize curse words by ear. Especially when Keith was involved. 

“Alright, alright, I get it, can you put me down now?” 

“That, I can do” Hunk replied, releasing his bear-hug, and let Lance collect himself. The two of them had been friends for a long time, long enough for Hunk to recognize when Lance needed someone to step in on his shenanigans, and when he needed someone to see the insecurities behind his wall of confidence. 

The training room was quiet for a moment, the silence filled only by the paladins’ fast, post-workout breathing. Lance’s eyes flashed apologetically for a moment, before regaining their usual bravado. They’d been training hand-to-hand for the past two hours, an order-masked-as-a-suggestion from Allura, and their energy was starting to wane.

“Okay, I’m done for the night. Sorry about your face, Lance” Keith supplied, a smirk ghosted at his lips from the double-meaning. The Red Paladin grabbed his water bottle, or at least what was a close altean version of the human container, and walked out to the dorms. Lance fumed, and once the raven-haired teen was out of earshot, Lance imploded. 

“How can he say that?! Wha- I’m the- He just-...UGH!”

“I know buddy, I know, the guy puts the ‘ouch’ in douche” Hunk replied, retying his orange headband. “Do you want to come back to the kitchens with me? I’m gonna grab a snack before bed, we still have all those spongy cake-ish things that Coran got from Alpha-413 last week!” 

A wave of fatigue suddenly hit Lance as he wiped the last of the blood from his nose onto his shirt, and he felt a bit dizzy. 

Though not from blood loss. 

“No, that’s okay man, but thanks. Save me one for tomorrow maybe? I’m going to go clean up and get changed before I stain this suit” Lance smiled. Hunk nodded understandingly, and signed “Love ya” to his buddy. Lance’s smile brightened, and he returned the gesture warmly. One of Lance’s younger siblings was born deaf, and as a child Lance had devoted much of his time to learning to sign with her. The habit of using his hands as he verbally spoke came out now and again when he was particularly animated, and Hunk had made the effort early on to learn the basics of ASL. If he was being honest, it had also come in handy during missions multiple times, as a code language of sorts. Apparently the Galra kept little to no documentation of this method of communication.

After Hunk left the training room, Lance let his shoulders sag a bit. He couldn’t quite shake the nausea, and his vision felt fuzzy at the edges. Puffing out a slow breath, Lance rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands and made his way back to the dormitory section of the castle.

It was a smart design choice to make the dorms so close to the training decks, Lance decided. He’d have to bring it up with Coran the next time he needed help cleaning the cryo-pods. The older Altean came across as quite childish, however the better you got to know him, the more you appreciated and admired his character. After all the battles and heartbreak the Coran had endured in his lifetime, he still managed to stay positive and bubbly and nice and ridiculous, and it reminded Lance of his uncle Henri. 

He pushed thoughts of his family to the back of his mind, he was too tired to feel homesick. Exhausted, actually. 

After trudging to showers, and nearly falling asleep while standing under the water’s spray, Lance went through is nightly skincare routine with practised hands. Luckily, Allura had given him Altean beauty and health products after his Earth stash had run out.  
At first, the odd colours of the alien liquids and creams had freaked him out, but after learning that they had no dyeing qualities and rubbed in clear, Lance had grown to like them almost more than his go-to cleansers from home.

It was relaxing in a weird way, he’d washed and moisturised his face in this fashion enough times that habit relieved him of active thought. After carefully rubbing in the blueish cream and its pigment faded, Lance stole a glance at himself in the mirror. His nose wasn’t broken, Hell, it wasn't even fractured but the tenderness of his skin suggested that he’d be gifted with a lovely bruise the next day with a side of mild swelling. Great. Thanks Keith. 

He slipped on his blue and gold embroidered bathrobe over his lightly bruised body, decided against getting changed right away. Despite the vacuum of space right outside their doorstep, Lance kept his room extremely warm compared to the others’. Warm enough that boxers were more than enough coverage when paired with an Altean blanket. Coran had repaired the castle enough for the temperature regulation systems to regain function, and to Lance’s surprise the system functions not only allowed heat, but also humidity control. Having his room simulate his home climat brought a shallow comfort to the Cuban teen. 

Lance placed the tubes of facial product back in the communal shower storage, next to Shiro’s extensive alien eyeliner collection, and left for the dorms. The ship was massive and labyrinthine and there was enough space for each paladin to have their own wing of facilities if they so wanted. But they didn’t. The past few months had made a family of them, and sleeping in the same dormitory hall provided a necessary comfort. 

Hunk was still in the kitchen, hence his empty room when Lance walked past. First on the right, closest to the kitchens. If Lance was in his right mind he’d have taken up his buddy’s offer for a snack. But he wasn’t. Blue pressed herself against his wall of thought, rubbing him soothingly like a cat does a visitor’s legs. The sensation brought a smile to his lips and he cast any negative thoughts from his mind. 

They were close enough to the Lions’ bays that Lance and Blue could have a more or less ongoing dialogue. So far, they had the strongest connection of anyone on the team, and their relationship had really helped his self-confidence, and gave him great pride. He felt her purr, and the ghost sensation lit up his chest in warmth. For a moment, the dizziness faded from the edge of his vision.

Lance's room was the next on the left and, quite ungracefully, he staggered inside and flopped on his bed, sighing as the door closed behind him. He didn’t bother putting on his headphones, knowing that he would be out like light no matter the creaking, groaning noises of the semi-dormant castle. He did however reach across his bed to the nightstand-ish contraption and pulled out his black sleep mask, strapping it around his head to cover his eyes.

Despite his sporadic behaviour on and off missions, Lance was a creature of habit and could not completely shake his routine. Besides, the dark mask felt...soft, and warm...and nice and he had grown too used to sleeping with it for it to be discarded. 

Lance felt Blue recede to the shallows of his mind, and the emptiness that followed set him on edge. Blue normally stayed with him until he fell asleep, and comforted him if he had nightmares. Maybe she was tired too. 

Or maybe Lance was too close to sleep to be worth the effort. 

No. Something was definitely up. His Lion would never leave him at a time like this, especially since she knew how rattled he was today. Inexplicably, a weird warmth feathered up his body, pooling in his limbs. Lance couldn't help himself from being lulled into sleep, still awkwardly sprawled over his bed.

And that night, he dreamt.

Vividly.


	2. Derse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance feels off, and rightly so, in his dreams he snags himself on another reality with some very interesting people :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have fun

Chapter 2

Lance liked the colour purple. Purple was a nice colour. He had a favourite purple tank top for beach combing along the shores of Varadero back home in Cuba, the teen practically lived in that piece of clothing during the summer. Shiro had some badass mauve-y eyeliner that looked pretty goddamn banging if he was being honest, and Allura could rock any hue if we’re getting real here (though purple was a plus). Not even the angry, purple-furred snarls of Galra soldiers could deter him from liking the colour.

Though even for Lance, this was way too much purple.

It was dizzying in a weird way, disorienting and overwhelming to the eye. Lance was very much a dreamer, both awake and asleep, but his subconscious had really conjured up some major weird-ass shit to place him in the centre of an impossibly massive and endless PURPLE city. Like, entirely purple city. Like, Barney the dinosaur and Tinky Winky got freaky and this place was their love child's crib, kind of purple city. The blue paladin was surrounded by uniformly studded towers and spiked buildings, resembling to a tee the gothic architecture of old he’d studied in school. He stood in the mouth of a gigantesque equilateral archway, that feed into a balcony overlooking the indigo sea of spiked buildings. 

There were no stars in the inky black sky, yet the city glowed vividly from within itself, casting a deceptively soft glow upward to the obsidian heavens. There were no man-made lights to be seen, and yet Lance found himself seeing by perfect light, magenta hues bouncing off the complex architecture around him.

Swinging his head madly back and forth, Lance took in his strange surroundings with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. He’d dreamt lucidly before, often actually, but this experience felt entirely life-like and legit and it was slightly concerning him. Where ever he was in his own psyche, Blue wasn’t with him, and Lance stood between the purple stone pillars feeling smaller than ever. But the discomfort was not so much that he felt panicked enough to rouse himself, and so the blue paladin opted instead to explore the seemingly forgotten city.

“Hello?” The teen called out, albeit cautiously. No response. The city had its own mental buzz in the back of Lance’s mind, similar to when Blue purred, though much...paler, if that made sense. Or perhaps, further away. 

Or maybe this was just an odd dream about a planet they’d recently visited, though he couldn’t trace it back to a world in particular. For the moment, Lance allowed himself the white-lie. He’d had weird-ass dreams before, and this is was definitely not the first to puzzle him. There was that one with him and Keith in the poorly-labeled bathrooms in that space mall that one time and-

Nevermind.

But this was the first dream (lucid or otherwise) to allow him the time to glance down at his fingers and count them. Correctly. As in, mental checks be checked, because this felt unreasonably real. Maybe the rest of the team were there too? Maybe Allura had beam-me-up-Scotty-ied them to their next planet to free? The Galra certainly would fit in here, considering the colour palette. But there was something about the black void above his head that shook the thoughts from his head. What planet didn’t have any nearby stars? Is that even possible? 

It’s with his head turned up at the sky while wandering the balcony that Lance sees it. 

The moon. 

Or was it a moon? Whatever is was, it was large, purple, spherical and attached to the planet by a massive purple (what a surprise choice of colour) chain. Lance realized with a start that the moonish thing was spiked with its own city, the gothic structures spanning its entire surface. Following the chain down to its tether to the planet, or at least, where Lance imagined it to be on the horizon, the blue paladin was confused to find that the city in which he stood seemed to span the entire surface of this planet as well.  
How could he tell that? Well for starters, the Cuban teen was coming to understand just how high up he was in the city, and that, from this vantage point, he could see the curve of the planet’s surface littered with more sharp purple structures. And he decided that this world must be considerably smaller than Earth if he could see it’s spherical shape simply by gaining a bit of altitude. Pidge would’ve remarked something important about the planet’s fantastic ability to sustain such a large city despite its small size, or something important about the structural integrity of the chained moon. But Lance was at a loss for words. He was at a loss for anything, really.

Hunk was going to freak when Lance told about this place, it was surreal to the point that Lance had no real choice but to take it at face value and just enjoy the view. The blue paladin’s smile faded as his gut clenched. He missed his buddy. How long had he been here? Minutes? Hours? Days? He couldn’t tell, the sky never changed. He wasn’t thirsty, or hungry, or...tired? So it couldn’t have been that long. Closing his eyes, Lance tried to fade back into consciousness, feeling ready to get back to the castle, the waking world, where team Voltron had shit to do and places to be. It felt like it normally did when he tried to wake up, whether it be from a nightmare or a fond memory, like being pulled back through a tunnel, digging his way back to his bed. 

Lance felt the edges of his body fade, and he shut his eyes as his mind moved him. When the movement stopped, he opened his eyes slowly.

This was not his bedroom aboard the Altean castle.

This was a RED bedroom, with a red bed and red walls and a-

Oh.

A person.

A boy, about his age, dressed to the nines (if nines were old fashioned royalty-esque violet pyjamas that Lance would totally wear unironically, and fuck Keith if he thought it was lame). 

“Who the everloving fuck are you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is so short, but it was a good place for me to stop. Next chapter will have lots of dialogue and sass and trash so I need to prepare haha
> 
> Im planning for this to be a long ass fic, which is new for me I normally write smut so yahhh


	3. Holy Crow...!?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance and Dave meet eachother and sass is had, with a touch of bro-ing it out but also not lol :P

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also just to clarify ive aged the beta kids up by a few years to be closer to lance's age because why not XD Im trying to make this encounter as realistic as I can but at the end of the day this is just for fun so forgive any massive oversights plz 
> 
> If you want input on future chapters Id love to hear your ideas :)

Chapter 3

"Who the everloving fuck are you?"

Lance is momentarily taken aback by the slight southern drawl hanging off the boy’s lips. An image of Keith rose in the back of his mind, and the blue paladin wondered if at any point in his life Keith had had a texan accent. Then he stopped wondering, because there were more pressing things at hand.

“The name’s Lance, and I could say the same thing to you, compañero” the paladin offered, his body still stiff with caution. 

“It’s Dave” The blond teen countered, arms folded a bit defensively over his chest, covering a moon-like crescent printed on his pyjamas. Dave was on the gangly side of things, however, with his arms folded, Lance could see the thick ropes of muscle defining his limbs. The build was not unlike the blue paladin’s own. 

But that was where any physical resemblance stopped. While Lance was sporting dark, sun-kissed skin, Dave had some of the palest flesh the Cuban teen had ever seen in his life (save perhaps for Pidge, because that kid lacked pigment, jesus). This paired with the strange teen’s white-blond hair and obnoxious, black aviator sunglasses made the pair of them quite the contrasting sight to behold.

“Why are you wearing sunglasses? It’s, like, practically night outside...I think” 

Great job Lance. Don’t ask any of the important questions, like “where are we?” for starters. Ask the strange pyjama kid why he wears fucking shades in the dark because obviously that should be your highest priority right now. 

“The casual coolness of these shades transcends the time of day, bro. This shit is the Oprah Winfrey of irony, dishing out sick vibes to every worn out soccer mom in a five mile radius-” Dave retaliated, a rhythm weaving itself between his odd words and rendering Lance kind of (totally) speechless. Seems as though this kid could keep up, if not surpass, the Cuban teen’s motormouth. 

Eyes quizzical and jaw slightly agape, the blue paladin let himself relax. Dave didn’t seem to mean any harm, physically anyways. 

“Woah woah woah buddy, okay, that’s great and all but, like, where the fuck am I? Do you live here, or…?” Lance asked, curving up an eyebrow as he tried to read Dave’s expression (which was fucking difficult, due to the fact that he wore jet black aviators and sported an award-winning poker face). 

Dave shrugged his shoulders, placing his hands in his pant pockets. “This is where I go when I’m asleep, it’s like my room from home only...different”

Lance nodded thoughtfully. “So, you’re human right? From planet Earth? How the hell are you here if you’re sleeping there…?” 

Dave shrugged with a larger roll of his shoulders, “Beats me, this game honestly confuses the shit outta me. I had no idea other people could join our session just out of the blue. You are a player, right? You hardly seem scripted” 

Lance gave the other teen the biggest ‘what-the-actual-fuck-are-you-talking-about’ face, and shook his head repetitively. “Game? What game? I have no idea what you’re going on about, ‘Dave’, but this purple planet is starting to get to me and I’d really like to wake up now!” 

It was Dave’s turn to look confused, “Shit man, I don’t know where the hell you came from or why the hell you’re on Derse, but I’m really not the dude to be talking to. Laying down some sick beats is more my style, mixing and meshing and scratching and stepping - Rose is the chick you should be hitting up for truths...but I think she’s awake right now” Dave continued, walking over to the bedroom window and poking his head outside. 

“Great, thanks for all your help, and yes that was sarcasm bro” The blue paladin shot, feeling moreso angry at the situation than at Dave. “It’s not like I CHOSE to come here! Wherever here is…” he sighed. Wait. What. That thing. On the bed. “Uhhh...Dave...what the heck in the world is that creepy ass puppet doing on your bed? Nevermind don’t answer that-” 

“I don’t deny that Lil Cal is creepy as fuck - just...leave the sneaky little shit be and you should be alright” Dave answered, grimacing. Lance didn’t even grace him with a reply, just shuddered and slowly stepped over to Dave, joining the blond at the open window. 

This view of Derse was even more jaw dropping than that of the balcony, each spire and and studded monument blended into the next, creating a violet sea of spikes and hollow archways. Lance didn’t know how high up they were, but it was borderline nauseating to look down (and this is coming from a guy who drops loop-de-loops with Blue like it’s a morning stroll). He tried waking up again, closing his eyes and pulling as far back from this room as he could, but to no avail. When Lance blinked his eyes open, he caught Dave staring at him with a softness to his face. 

“You like blue?” He asked, with zero context.

“Um...yeah? It’s my favourite colour I guess”

“My best bro John likes blue too, you sorta remind me of him” Dave smirked.

“Oh yeah?” Lance laughed, “How so?”

“You’re both fuckin’ dorks, man” 

Lance scowled, face comically stretched, “How do you know I’m a dork- I mean, I’m so totally not a dork, Pidge and Hunk are dorks, I’m more of a mix of-” 

“Whatever, listen, I don’t care why you’re here but there’s something you need to understand about the incipisphere-”

“Incipi-what?” 

“Incipisphere! Stop cutting me off goddammit, jesus fucking tits man” Dave countered, annoyance locking in his jaw.

“Pfffft what-no, you keep cutting ME off, you douche!” Lance stormed, rivalry biting at his lips. Dave reminded him of someone he knew as well. 

“Fuck if I care, listen-”

Dave was cut off again, though not by Lance. Crows shot upwards from the bowels of the city and flooded the open window, pouring into the red room mercilessly.

“Holy crow..!?” Lance exclaimed stumbling backwards into less avian-occupied space. 

“Fuckin’ crows, man!! FUCK!” Dave yelled, and despite the chaos Lance was able to appreciate the rumble in the other teen’s voice. I mean what - no he didn’t. 

Lance didn’t catch what Dave said next, the charcoal birds cawed and screamed unrelentingly in his ears, a pattern emerging in their strangled cries. He closed his eyes, clasping his hands over his ears as they were swarmed. The pattern of noise sharpened, becoming barred in second-long intervals. 

CRAW! CRAW! CRAW! CRAW! 

And then suddenly Lance was on the floor. 

But not a red floor. 

The blue paladin panicked when all he could see was darkness, before realizing that he still had his sleep mask on.  
Removing it slowly, he opened his eyes to the familiar metallic walls of his bedroom aboard the Castle. The emergency alarm was blaring. Lights flashing in unison. Not sleeping with headphones on might have been his saving grace, what if he hadn’t been able wake up on his own? 

Lance willed his limbs into action, whatever fucked up dream he’d just had could wait to be picked apart for meaning until later. After this situation was dealt with. It’s not like he’d forget that Dave kid or the impossibly purple planet anytime soon. 

Besides, him and Blue had some ass-whooping to hand out. He felt her cradle him in his mind, wrapping herself around him with a necessary care. Lance found his heartbeat slowing at her warm embrace, calming down enough to focus on the problem at hand.

Presumably, a big fat purple alien problem headed straight for them.

Oh joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Such drama, very space~
> 
> If you want shippy stuff im open to suggestions - but no promises :)
> 
> Thanks for the nice comments btw im glad people are intrigued. Will probably start updating every Thursday (starting next week) - we'll see XD


	4. Childish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Lance's dream, the blue paladin is left questioning himself and the validity of Dave's warning. The team is headed for what is presumably a Galra firefight with an unregistered planet, preparing to kick some ass. Apparently, this fight will be unlike any they have ever faced before...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY 4-13!!  
> I swear this upload was coincidental haha

When Lance startled onto the bridge, breath spiking rapidly in his chest, he was surprised to find that he was the first of the paladins there. Allura stood at the main console, confusion curving at her eyebrows as she spoke. “Lance? Well I certainly did not expect to see you here first, though I suppose there is a first for everything” She started, her posture was hanging with a strange fluidity which Lance could only attribute to her being Altean. 

“Pfft-What-That’s not f-...ugh nevermind...So what’s the sitch? I thought blaring alarms meant ‘bad guys approaching’ or whatever” Lance scoffed, waving his arms madly in sharp movements. Unannounced alarms with no further instruction was a call to the bridge, old crew code that Coran used in his time as a flight engineer during the early days of the Galra war. The team had adopted them for simplicities sake, and also out of caring for their friend’s loss. 

“It looks like a nearby system is under Galra fire, the plasmatech radar and thermal energy detectors are wigging out. It must be getting pretty intense over there” Coran piped up, his head poking out from behind the main console as he stepped away from the Castle’s scanners. Coming up onto the deck, Lance could hear strain edging into the Altean engineer’s voice, cracking it worse than usual. It must be very intense indeed.

“New weapons?” A voice sounded from behind Lance, ragged from insomnia. The blue paladin turned to face his friends as Shiro, Keith, and Pidge filed onto the bridge, followed a moment later by Hunk. 

“Honestly, Shiro, I’m not sure even my father ever witnessed such massive streaks of energy during his time in space. All we know for sure is that it’s off the charts and that it’s bad for whatever lifeforms live on that planet” Allura replied sullenly, pulling her arms around her chest in a tight fold. It was in moments like these that Lance had to remind himself that Allura was human too - okay well, not human, but you get the expression - and it was all too easy to get swept up in her leaderly confidence and royal etiquette. All too easy to forget that she had her own weaknesses and fears and insecurities. Lance could relate, though he’d never say it aloud. 

“Speaking of which, Coran, what system is it? Has the planet been classified intergalactically or not?” She continued, regaining an air of confidence. 

“Hmm, it would appear not, Princess” Coran replied, surfing through what Lance imagined to be the Altean internet on his data tablet, “Though that doesn’t mean that it’s unsupporting of life. By my calculations, it’s only about three quadrups flight time away” 

Apparently, such close proximity to that amount of firepower was what had triggered the Castle’s alarm systems in the first place. 

“I say we go check it out” Keith stated, determination sparking in his tired eyes. Lance was about to shoot him a sassiful remark in reply, before Pidge beat him to the punch. 

“But what if it’s an abandoned or uninhabited planet? We’d be walking right into their hands, and considering the readings I’m picking up as well, right into a weapons test” The green paladin replied, worry tinging her voice. Lance caught up on the sentiment lighting fast, and in turn grew unsettled.

“Are you saying that whatever weapons they’re testing are more powerful than Voltron?” Lance asked, blue eyes blown wide in shock. Apparently Hunk had been wondering the same, and he wrapped an arm around his best buddy, for the comfort of them both. 

“I...I don’t know what I’m saying. All I know is that whatever kind of energy is getting picked up by Green, it’s nothing she’s ever seen before- and that worries me” Pidge answered, breaking eye contact. A silence followed, pregnant with heavy thought.

“I say we go” Shiro spoke, lifting his head to address his team. “We can’t take the chance that the planet’s uninhabited, people could be getting hurt as we speak”

“Shiro’s right, it’s our job as paladins to go” Keith added, stepping a foot forward as if to accentuate his point. Of course Keith thought Shiro was right. Of course Shiro always thought Keith was right. And Lance was always wrong. Not that he was disagreeing with the other paladins’ words, the Cuban teen absolutely wanted to go and fight and maybe save a few lives if they could. Anything to get the unsettling feeling in his stomach from his dream out of his mind. 

Anything to stop him from having to think, period.

“Either way, those weapons need destroying” Shiro continued. Hunk sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “You don’t have to convince me, I’m on board, no matter how much this feels like a bad idea, I can’t stand by and let innocent people get injured” 

Lance smiled against his friend’s shoulder, Hunk was honestly too precious for this world. Lance didn’t know if he deserved to have the large Hawaiian teen as a friend, but he sure was glad of it.  
“So it’s decided then? Pidge, I know you’re uneasy about this, believe me when I say that we all are, but as paladins we should at the very least investigate” Allura concluded, nodding to the green paladin in understanding. Pidge shrugged, and nodded back. “I would regret it if we let this go and it turned out that innocent people had been killed. Besides, there might be clues to the whereabouts of my family there” She continued, almost wistfully. 

Coran flashed the team a shaky thumbs up, “Alright paladins, it’s settled, we’ll set a course for our mystery planet. In the meantime, grab some early breakfast and rest up. At the rate I’ve upgraded the castle, I’ll bet we could make it there in three-quartz the time!” He laughed, purely to ease the tension. Him, Allura, and Shiro would go over tactics in a tic, once he had their course settled and angle of approach finalized. 

Keith stalked out of the room the second the emergency meeting was over, presumably to cram in some last minute training or to brood over something. Maybe write some angsty teen poetry. Lance didn’t really know much about Keith, only what had been preached to him at the Garrison. Still, Lance had enough street smarts to know when someone was packing some serious baggage, and Keith was bursting at the seams. Maybe his mullet was just the overflow, Lance thought to himself, snickering.

“What are you laughing about?” Hunk accused, giving Lance a quizzical look. The laugh was poorly timed considering the circumstances. The smaller teen sighed and shook his head, waving a hand in the air as if to disperse his thoughts. “Oh nothing, my good friend. You wanna grab some breakfast? My head’s pounding and my eyes hurt. I hope to god that getting up this early doesn’t give me permanent bags” Lance whined, pouting dramatically in an attempt to erase any of his buddy’s doubt about his well being. Hunk huffed and elbowed him playfully, “You had me at breakfast, amigo.”

As Lance and Hunk waltzed out of the bridge, Pidge announced that she was going to hang out with her Lion until Coran gave them an update on their arrival. Shiro flashed the youngest paladin a warm smile before engaging Allura in conversation.

***

“Esta torta es deliciooooosaaaa” Lance purred, biting back into the weird, almost Earth-like pastry. The adrenaline from waking up earlier had finally worn off, and the Cuban teen was thankful for the sugary treat. “Kind of like those Betty Crocker cake mixes mi mamá hates, only wetter and less porous” 

Hunk shrugged, grabbing another pastry from the Castle’s fridge system, and slipping the morsel into his mouth unceremoniously. “Yah, I’ve had way better back home, but dude we’re in space and this is as good as it gets so I’m happy” He laughed, trying to take his mind off the fact that they were likely walking right into a Galra trap. Lance saw the anxiety in the subtle tremble of Hunk’s calloused hands, and tried to reassure his friend as best he could.  
“We should save some of this sweet sweet celebratory confection for after we hand the Galra their asses on a platter” He smirked, licking the last of the sweetness from his fingers. Hunk shrugged, but allowed a smile to pull at his lips. Their friendship had only gotten stronger since leaving the Garrison, friendships seemed to flourish under shared trauma. He’d also gotten much closer to Pidge, or, at least as close as she would allow another person to be. That kid, though a genius, had struggled with relationships with others. Always blocked people out, wouldn’t let them get close enough to be worthy of caring. Maybe to prevent another loss like that of her family. Sometimes caring hurt. Lance could understand that. Nonetheless, he’d gotten to know the small computer genius miles better than he had previously, and he found comfort in their quiet friendship. It was like having a sister again.

God, Lance missed his family. His three younger siblings, Andreas, Paolo and Rosia. His two older sisters, Sophia and Angela. His step brothers, Felipe and Xavier. His aunts and uncles and cousins. His mamá. His papá. His grandparents, and great uncles and aunts. Lance, unlike most people he knew, had a large and loving family, at least when it counted. Sleeping in separate dorms at the Garrison had been the first time Lance had ever slept alone in his own bed in a quiet, cold room, metal walls providing no where near enough warmth or noise for the Cuban teen to feel at home. Because it wasn’t home. 

Neither was here, roaring through outer space with a patchwork team of teens and young adults (save for Coran). But it’s the closest he’s had to famiy in long time. So he took it. At least his family was presumably safe on Earth, away from the clawed hands of the Galra warriors. Hopefully.

Pidge on the other hand, had no such luxury in the back of her mind. Lance almost felt selfish for missing his family so much, when he knew that Pidge had to bear so much more uncertainty than he did.

Giving his buddy a hug, Lance slipped out from the kitchens and made his way to the Lions’ flight bays, hoping to catch up with his small, savage space sis before all hell broke loose. Her found her hunched over her laptop and extensive scanners, sitting in a tangled heap of Altean and Earth technology at Green’s feet. Lance felt Blue greet him in his mind, and he gave her the mental equivalent of a purr before flopping down beside the green paladin.

“So, anything good on TV?” He joked, laying his head on her shoulder, playing the part of a cat seeking attention. Anything to get Pidge to loosen up, even if it meant her getting mad at him instead of herself. This is what Lance did, he made his rounds, checking up on his team, giving them something - or someone - to be distracted by. Lance had never been great at personal space, it wasn’t really a thing in his household back in Cuba, and though Pidge was definitely not the touchy-feely type she allowed him the comfort. When, and only when, she felt like it. 

In this moment, it seemed as though she felt like it.

“Well if startlingly high levels of radiation and plasmatech energy counts as quality television, then yes, I suppose there is” She replied, not looking up from the plethora of screens and holographic displays. Lance nodded thoughtfully, peering over Pidge’s shoulder at the mass reading charts, some in English and some in Altean.

“You can read Altean?!” He asked, clearly impressed. The smaller teen chuckled and shook her head, mostly to herself. “No, not really, but I’ve familiarized myself with the numbering systems, and it’s not that tricky to figure out which symbols mean which kinds of readings-”

Lance smiled and let her continue, listening as actively as he could to her rantings over the Altean mathematics that she’d picked up listening to Coran talk while he worked. His attention peaked, however, when he heard her mention some interesting terminology.

“-and according one of the textbooks he lent me, Altea was once able to harness the incipient energy released from imploding star systems and used it as a precursor to modern-”

“Wait what?” Lance interrupted, sitting up suddenly. Dave had mentioned ‘Incipisphere’ to him in his dream, and at the time lance had no bearing on the meaning of the word. But Pidge had just used it’s root term. The blue paladin had a fairly firm grasp on english as his second language, and had practiced religiously to get rid of his Cuban accent, but there were still holes in his terminology, understandably. 

“What?”

“What does...what does ‘incipient’ mean?” He asked, trying to feign casual intrigue. His friend eyed him questioningly, her eyebrow arching over the rim of her glasses. “Well, it’s kind of like ‘beginning’, or, ‘emerging’?” She replied, returning her gaze to her main laptop.

Lance hummed in thought, and left it at that. Incipisphere. Beginning...circle? Or sphere. Emerging sphere? That made no fucking sense, he was doing this wrong. He opened his mouth, but for once in his life, closed it again before speaking. This was stupid. It was just a dream. Just a really fucking real and ridiculous dream.  
“Oh spit it out already, Lance, you’re killing me here. I’m not used to you actually shutting up for once” Pidge shot, eyes un-lifting from the displays. The Cuban teen scowled, then stuck his tongue out. “Hey, I can shut up whenever I want to, I just don’t because then who’d bother you-”

“The Galra?”

“Such sass from such a small child-”

“I’m not a child!”

“Well-”

“You’re stalling, just tell what you wanted to tell me and then stop talking”

“Incipisphere - do you know what that means?” Lance finally asked, breaking eye contact. 

“Umm...no. I can’t say that I do. Maybe Coran would? Why do you ask, where did you hear it?” Pidge replied, turning away from her equipment, awaiting an answer.

“Oh, well, no where, I was just brainstorming ways to use incipient and thought that that sounded like a real word?” Lance laughed, backtracking completely. A moment of silence passed.

“That’s really not how english works, Lance” Pidge finally answered, god that kid loved correcting people. Whatever, Lance would take the deflection and run. 

“Welp, thanks for the help, Pidgey, muy apreciado”

“It’s Pidge, not Pidgey, I’m not a pokemon” She scowled, shoving Lance in the shoulder more or less playfully. “Noted” he replied, standing up and retreating from her space, “I’ll see you later - when everything goes to shit.”

“I’ll see...you...then” The green paladin replied, her sentence trailing off as she focused back on her work. Lance sighed and left Green’s bay, heading back to the Bridge. He’d go see if Coran had made any progress in their course. Hopefully Shiro and Allura would have taken their flirting somewhere else by now. He told himself he was only going there to keep the older Altean company. To help him collect data. For company. Pretty much any reason other than because he was taking ‘Dave’ too seriously. He felt childish. Blue growled at his self-deprecating thoughts, but he shrugged it off.

WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME

He heard her roar into his mind, and he flinched, leaning against the corridor walls for support.

“What?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next couple chapters will be with our voltron friends. Lance will figure more shit out about Derse probably. Also more hurt lance to come~


	5. Adrift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Lance and Blue reconnected and open up to each other, the blue paladin decides that it's time to seek help about his dream. Unfortunately, things don't quite go his way, and the team winds up with more pressing matters at hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for all the support (like 400 views wtf??) and amazing comments, I did not expect so many people to actually be into this crossover. I am pleasantly surprised!!! :D 
> 
> Also, just to let you know, there are mentions of anxiety and panic attacks in this chapter, concerning Hunk and Coran. I consider it to be mild, but I thought I'd say so anyway just in case.

Blue had only ever used words with Lance on rare occasions, normally when his life was at risk and she could afford no error of interpretation. Even then, it was always with the fragments of Spanish she could find floating around in her paladin’s thoughts. But today she would make an exception. The blue paladin was initially surprised at the outburst, the sheer force of his lion’s astrophysical presence was enough to send him grasping for purchase on the cold, metallic walls of the Castle. 

“What?” 

WHY 

WHY DO YOU LEAVE ME

The lion’s outrage had turned sad, and soft, and it ripped at Lance’s heart to hear it. This was the last thing that he had expected to happen, though perhaps it shouldn’t have been. He’d assumed that Blue had left him of her own volition last night, that she had pulled herself from his mind out of fatigue or boredom. That’s what he had decided to tell himself since waking up. Apparently, that was not the case.

“I...Blue, I don’t understand, you left me, you...I thought you left me, last night-”

NO!

Lance staggered, overwhelmed with a rush of love and positive emotion from his lion. He slid his back down the wall to sit on the ground, trying to make sense of what Blue was trying to tell him.

AT NIGHT, YOU LEFT ME-

White light flashed across Lance’s vision as Blue sucked him into a memory. Him, Hunk, and Keith in the training room, his lion’s presence strong and comforting. A punch to the face, and he staggers, fog lacing his vision white at the edges. The shower. The hallway. His dorm room. Lance’s gut ached as Blue showed him her version of yesterday’s events. The angle of each scene set similar to the views of the Castle camera feeds. Did Blue use camera feeds? Where there cameras in his room?! No time to catch himself on the thought, as the air rushes from his lungs. He can feel a wall, an invisible boundary, weighing down on his chest as he watches his past self slip on the black sleep mask. Lance felt in this moment the same as he did that night, alone, and a little bit empty. 

He felt cold.

Was this how his lion had felt that night too? Lance tried to open his mouth, tried to speak, but in this astro-emotional memory it seemed as though he was devoid of a mouth. Or a body. All the blue paladin could do was observe what was put in front of him. He watched himself collapse onto his bed, an unnatural silence covering the way he slept. It was eerie, to see yourself slack and unmoving like that. It must have been eerie for Blue as well, especially since their connection had been weakened. Questions fluttered across Lance’s consciousness and, sensing his confusion, Blue pulled him out of the memory and back into his body on the floor in the hallway. 

Lance convulsed, a dry heave, breathing heavily as he fought the nausea creeping up his gut. When the adrenaline ebbed, he opened his eyes, and slowly sat back up against the wall. He sighed deeply, gathering his thoughts. The memory had been intense, and his body fatigued as he came back to his senses.

 

“I didn’t leave you, Blue, please believe me, I didn’t. I thought you’d left me. It felt the same for me. I’m sorry for not coming to you sooner, I guess I just thought that you...you were tired or busy or something-” 

He was silenced by the rush of warmth his lion emitted into his body, by the love she surrounded him with. It was a fierce love, like that of his Mamá, and the Cuban teen relished in the bittersweet comfort. 

WOULD NEVER LEAVE MY PALADIN

MY PILOT

MY FRIEND

MY CUB

WOULD NEVER LEAVE MY LANCE

The blue paladin couldn’t help but feel emotional, it had been a confusing and disconcerting day. His face rolled and folded in that silent, ugly crying way, holding his face in his hands as he sent Blue all the love and appreciation he could muster. Okay, this was good. Lance and Blue were all good, space pals until the end. Yes.

This now left Lance with a bigger problem. Maybe one worse than the alternative he’d made himself believe. If neither of them had cut the connection last night, who or what had? Blue felt his concern, but could offer no answer. Apparently this was a new thing for her too, despite her lengthy history of paladins. Gathering himself up off the floor, Lance decided to head to the bridge, maybe it was time to tell someone about what had happened. Maybe Coran would have some information. The lanky teen didn’t want to bother Shiro with the issue, he was troubled enough these days. Allura too. 

This whole connection-issue-dream-thing was overall poorly timed, the team was literally heading into battle, engaging within the the next couple hours in all likelihood. Lance couldn’t help but feel heavy as he started towards the bridge, still in his flight gear from the alarm earlier that morning. No point in changing out, they’d be headed to their lions soon enough. Maybe he should just let it go for the moment, talk to Coran about it after the battle. 

If everything goes well that is. 

Hesitation ghosted at his toes for a few steps, before Blue’s reassurance pushed him forward.

***

When Lance entered the bridge, he was surprised to find Shiro, Allura and Coran huddled around the Castle’s central console, clearly distressed. He contemplated turning around and leaving, Allura would probably tell him to leave anyways, but Lance found himself curious, and worried. Curious and worried enough not to care about getting yelled at. 

“Hey, ugh, what are you guys looking at?” He called out, concern in his voice as he jogged up to them. Shiro looked up to the Cuban teen with tension knitted tightly between his brows. 

Lance did not like that face. 

“We’ve...discovered some more information about the Galra weapons, and their combat ships. It’s not good” Shiro offered, sighing. Lance swallowed, wetting his mouth, not sure of what kind of news to expect.

“Sooo...how not good is ‘not good’?” he asked, shoulders sagging.

“Well, from what the Castle’s been picking up, it would seem as though the Galra are harnessing temporal energy and using it for a physical attack” Coran started, fingers tapping madly away at the interactive displays. “I’ve never seen anything like this...their technology must be decacycles ahead of ours, which is impossible. Maybe the Druids have been able to harness the time-warping qualities of singularities or-”

“Put simply, we’ve never seen or ever considered temporal energy as a weapon, only as a means of travel. My father had zero record of this kind of technology. The damage it could cause to a targeted world would be lethal, and we’ve no way of predicting the effects” Allura cut in, stopping Coran from going off on a rant that would only end in giving himself an anxiety attack. Lance admittedly couldn’t grasp the concept, but understood the fact that it was dangerous and that Voltron had to stop it. 

...Could Voltron stop it? 

Blue gave no comment, but her presence emitted determination, and Lance followed suite. Negative thoughts wouldn’t get them anywhere, the team looked distressed enough at the moment. 

“So it’s like a timey-wimey laser cannon or something, right? Let’s just form Voltron and smash the shit out of it-”

“Language, Lance, and besides we have no idea what the weapon looks like” Shiro interjected, his voice was light but the heaviness under his eyes spoke otherwise. 

“We don’t know what any of it looks like” Coran continued, “That’s not how the Castle’s scanners work. Our detection systems are entirely energy based, we won’t get any accurate images until we’re physically in proximity” 

Lance hummed in thought.

“...So does the energy the Castle detects affect it in any way? Or is it too far away?” The teen asked, his interest flagging at the thought of answers to his personal predicament.

“Well, no, not usually. The alarms, as we witnessed this morning, would alert us from any concerning bodies of energy before entering within range” Coran replied, grateful for the distraction of explaining the Castle’s functions. Lance, despite his hyperactive mouth, was an amazing listener. He always listened to the older Altean’s ramblings while they were cleaning equipment between missions. However, Lance was honestly disappointed at this news, it seemed as though interference from the Galra weaponry was not responsible for the cut between his and Blue’s mental connection. He shouldn’t have been surprised, it was stupid to think that he could solve this on his own anyway. Pushing the thought aside, Lance asked a few more questions, more for Coran’s benefit than his own. Allura flashed him a quick smile over her engineer’s shoulder, silently thanking Lance for easing the tension. Lance warmed at the appreciation.

“But the alarms this morning went off because the Castle picked up plasmatech emissions, right?” Lance said, confused. Shiro’s eyes widened in his own curiosity, Lance’s words sparking a thought. 

“That’s right Lance, so why didn’t alarms go off when it picked up temporal readings?” Shiro asked, turning towards Allura. 

“Because temporal energy isn’t considered ‘concerning’. Technically, it’s everywhere, just not in concentrated amounts. Discrepancies in concentration are normally due to space travel or certain celestial bodies” Allura explained, stepping back from the crowded console. “The Castle itself emits trace amounts of it, particularly when utilizing wormhole technology. We only discovered the weaponry because Coran is thorough and monitors everything’

Coran blushed at the praise, before trying to wave it off. “Well now I wouldn’t say that, but I’d be something poor of a flight engineer if I didn’t keep a close eye on temporal readings” He joked, rubbing the back of his neck. A soft silence followed, pregnant with thought. 

Lance, unsurprisingly, broke it after a few moments. “So, then, what’s the plan, Princess?” he asked, standing tall and cadet-like, the way he was taught to at the Garrison. He only took the posture as a joke, but Allura answered quite seriously.

“First, we need to let the other paladin’s know of our discovery. Time is of the essence. Shiro, can you make an announcement over the comms?” She asked, her leaderly qualities bubbling up to the surface. “Have them meet us in the dining hall”

***

After briefing the team, the seven of them sat at the tables in silence. Well, almost silence. The wheels in Pidge’s brain were turning so loud Lance swore he could hear her fumming in her mind over the thought of such advanced technology. She’d asked just shy of a million questions, and was churning the information in her head, trying to form some kind of technical weakness to expose in their weaponry. However, it was keith who finally broke the silence.

“How do you know it’s weaponry, couldn’t it just be abnormally high readings?” He asked, eyebrows drawn together as he frowned. Lance silently agreed with the question, it was a good point. Keith looked dishevelled, as he normally did, not that Lance noticed really or anything or thought that it was maybe sort of attractive or anything because it totally wasn’t.  
He’d been training, the flush of the red paladin’s skin showing swift blood flow, sweat clinged to the hair at the back of his neck. If they were ever in an agreeable mood, the two of them would train together sometimes, in the evenings. Lance found that it helped him get to bed when he felt restless, so he could understand why Keith relied on the exercise so much. That being said, Lance in no way wished to spend ALL of his free time there. It was a little obsessive. 

Lance could never be the one to drag him away from the training deck, the red paladin wouldn’t listen to him on that front. Normally, it was Pidge or Shiro who prompted him out of there, asking for help with something. Or just plain telling him to get his ass to bed. Which was hypocritical, considering that the head and left arm of Voltron didn’t sleep either, not really. Lance pulled himself from thought and back to the conversation at hand, curious for Allura’s answer. 

“Well considering the fact that we definitively detected Galra ships and THE LARGEST concentrations of temporal energy ever on record, next to an unregistered planet in unclaimed space, we drew some conclusions” Allura responded, low levels of sass sneaking into her words. Probably not intentionally, but because of stress. Keith took the hint, and nodded in agreement with Allura and Coran’s conclusions.

This whole time, Hunk hadn’t said much. Lance wrapped a hand around his friend’s under the dining table, the way he used to at the Garrison before class exams. Hunk was an absolute genius, but exam stress still settled in the Hawaiian teen’s chest whenever Iverson announced a new flight test date. Sometimes to the point where all the large teen could do was tinker obsessively in their shared dorm room, until his fingers numbed and stained from handling such large quantities of engineering parts and electrical supplies. Lance had learned early on that the only way to ease his buddy out of the mania was physical contact, like hugs or hand holding. Purely platonic and extremely comforting. Lance found himself relying on the touch as well, missing his cuddly younger siblings and his parents firm hugs.

Lance tried to bring himself back to the conversation at hand. Again. He kept drifting out, getting lost in thought. He blinked, for longer than he meant to, and when he opened his eyes the whole team was staring at him. Shiro’s face was concerned, and Lance saw his lips moving, he was talking. To him. Everything felt fuzzy, and heavy, his limbs lead-locked, hand like a weight in his lap and the other lax in Hunk’s palm. Something was wrong. 

Very wrong.

He panicked, tried to move, but he kept drifting. He vaguely felt Hunk grabbing his shoulder, trying to shake him back to coherent thought. He felt Blue fighting to hold onto his, burrowing her way into his mind, but to no avail. 

Blue was with him, just barely, as he fell unconscious this time, his upper body falling limply to the table. Lance barely registered the clack of his head against the smooth metal before he was gone.

Then awoke to a terrifyingly familiar purple world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehehehehe  
> Sorry for the cliff hanger, but next chapter is gonna be GOOD (spoiler: Lance meets Rose agghhhh)
> 
> Thanks again for the support, if you have any thoughts or if you want input on the shippy stuff that comes later down the road, lemme know ;)
> 
> -GK


	6. The traveler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance wakes up on Derse only to find Rose. Sass, as well as serious discussion, is had. Will Lance be able to dig up for information about his dreams, as well as the destructive Galra weaponry? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, team Voltron is at a loss for words at their friend's collapse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who has commented and given kudos, it's really driving my motivation behind this fic. This chapter is really dialogue heavy, so sorry if that's not your thing. I promise it will get action-y soon, but there are certain elements that need building first...;) also there have been some grammatical errors so far in past chapters, but i'm not overly concerned, if you notice a bad one lemme know and i'll get my shit together haha

Lance awoke on Derse differently than his previous visit. The last time, he’d had the opportunity to wander and explore its gothic archways and looming spires. To puzzle with wide eyes at the city-planet’s monochromatic purple colouring. Only when he’d tried to pull back to reality had he been tossed into Dave’s room, leaving both parties equally confused at the other’s presence. 

Not this time.

When Lance opened his eyes, he was met immediately by an obnoxiously pink bedroom. The quiet hum of Derse in the back of his mind was the only indication at first of his whereabouts. Lance’s senses came back to him slowly, touch crawled back into his limbs as his ears yawned open and his eyes flitted to attention. A soft, cushion like surface rested against his lower back - he was laying face-up on something comfortable. A bed. Tilting his head to the right, Lance started to take in more of his surroundings. 

“Oh, so you do function, that’s mildly reassuring”

What?

Lance traced the snide comment to it’s source, and his eyes flared wide at the sight of a girl standing in the centre of the strange bedroom. Not Dave. A girl with blonde hair cut symmetrically to her jawline and the blackest lipstick the blue paladin had ever seen in his life. Not-Dave is a few inches taller than Pidge but shares her sharp, analytical eyes. The blonde chick also sported pyjamas that were as equally extravagant as Dave’s, fashioned from the same violet material. 

“Fully functional, thanks...and really fucking done with waking up on this purple rock. Now, what’s a smokin’ girl like you doing in a place like this? Dave-” Lance started, confused. He hadn’t even tried to fall asleep and yet somehow he was HERE. Again. With no context. And with no Blue, her absence loud within the blue paladin. 

“I can assure you that the confusion is mutual, Lance, and that unprofound flirtation is an ineffective method for obtaining answers. It would seem as though you share that useless tendency with a certain Dave Strider” The girl responded, and Lance all but gaped. 

Was this for real? Do people really talk that way, conversationally? 

“I applaud your cognitive dexterity in asking my identity,” She continued, “but my state of being is, as they say, ‘so fucking out of your league’.”

Lance felt as though he’d been slapped across the face with surprise. Okay. He had not expected that big of a slag, but whatever, he could recover. The blue paladin thought back to his last encounter on Derse, with Dave. The guy must’ve said something about other people, someone who could help-

Rose.

Dave had mentioned Rose. 

Lance decided to take a gamble, and bet that this wordy blonde chick with the punk vibes was Rose, and silently cursed how short-cut his interaction with Dave had been. Wait, were they...together? Him and Rose, like, together together? The Cuban teen cast the thought aside immediately. This was so not the time for questioning her’s, or Dave’s, romantic availability. 

“It’s Rose, right?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that this is my addressment” 

“Okay, Rose, so how do you know my name? Did Dave tell you, have you seen him around?”

The girl looked a bit rattled by how Lance cut through her rebuttal and got straight to the point. The move earned him a slight amount of her respect. She carried on without pause.

“Indeed. Dave told me of your visit, as well as of your resemblance to John. A statement with which I entirely disagree, you have barely a nerdy quality to your name and I see no indication of an obsession with B-List movies. I would argue that our wordy friend is merely lovesick.”

“Oh so HE’S the wordy one-”

“Undeniably”

“Also why mock my name, what’s wrong with Lance? I could be nerdy, I like Starwars and shit” Lance scoffed, mildly offended.

“Firstly, you are confusing the notions of ‘nerd’ and ‘geek’, and secondly, Lance is synonymous to ‘Fuck Boy’. Judging by your failed attempts at romancing both Dave and I-”

“Woah woah woah there buddy, I was NOT romancing Dave. That guy is more of an ass than Keith, and Keith is a massive ass 99.9% of the time” Lance practically screeched, arms flying to his defense. 

“Striders are known for their callipygian assets, I will not deny this.” Rose replied, with zero pause for thought. How did she fly back with words so quickly? Lance realised that her and Dave must have the most insane banter, and for a moment the Cuban teen truly felt a bit out of his league. 

“I-I don’t even know what callipidgeon means, but you know what? I don’t care! What I DO care about is getting back to my friends, and off this purple nightmare of a planet in time to stop the Galra!” Lance exploded, frustration and fatigue beginning to overwhelm him. He stood up from the bed and strode over to Rose’s window, completely disregarding the ridiculous sequences of M E O W written on the girl’s walls. He was honestly too tired for this bullshit. It felt as though he hadn’t slept in days. Maybe visiting Derse didn’t count as sleeping?

Whatever.

Lance gripped the windowsill until his knuckles paled at the loss of blood. Rose hadn’t responded to him, her arms folded as she watched him stare out the window and over the vast expanses of spiked buildings. 

“I suppose we should dispense with the pleasantries and get straight to business.” She said, finally, moving to sit down on her bed. She pulled a pair of knitting needles out of nowhere - literally nowhere, what the fuck, they just appeared out of thin air - and continued to knit as she spoke. Lance tried to ignore her slight resemblance to his great aunts, whose calloused hands had woven him several sweaters as a send off to the Garrison.

“I have no explanation for why you’re here. None of us know you, and as I understand it you can not possibly be scripted. The solution could be procured by context. Tell me Lance, where are you from? I assume Earth.”

“Correctamundo” Lance replied, leaning up from the window and turning to lean against the frame. “But for the past, oh I don’t know...year-ish, I’ve been in space with the Castle of Lions, forming Voltron with my friends to fight against Zarkon and the Galra Empire”

The arch of her eyebrow was the only indication of Rose’s surprise. Lance took her silence as an indication to continue.

“My friends and I, we’re paladins of Voltron. Each of us have our own giant, magical robotic space Lion, mine is Blue, and together our Lions form the weapon Voltron.” Lance’s voice wavered a bit as he realised how balls-to-the-wall crazy it all sounded when explained to another person. “We’re kind of the last hope for most planets at this point, the Galra have taken over hundreds of worlds already. Killing and enslaving billions of lives. It’s...horrible. But my team and I, we can stop them. We have to. I really...I really have to get back to the Castle, we’re about to engage in another firefight.”

Rose nodded thoughtfully, and looked up from her knitting as Lance continued.

“What qualifies you to be a paladin of Voltron?” She asked, and for a moment Lance found her words to be critical, before realising that she was genuinely curious. 

“Well, the Lions pick their paladins, kind of like the wands in Harry Potter-” Lance started, and quirked his head in question as Rose’s eyes widened joyfully. Someone likes wizards? “-and from what Coran has told us they each have different personalities and preferences when it comes to their paladin. My Lion, Blue, she’s the friendliest and the most welcoming, but she’s fierce and strong and kicks total butt in combat.”

Lance’s throat closed with emotion as he spoke of Blue, he missed her so goddamn much right in this moment. Missed the warmth of her purring in his chest. He felt incomplete without her pressing up against him in his mind. Derse’s hum was different than Blue’s, it was colder and less fulfilling. More distant.

“I wish she were here right now. I hate that this whole mess leaves us disconnected when I’m away”

“Judging from the way you speak of her, that would be highly ill advised. A massive mechanical cosmic feline, as illustrious as she sounds, would have no hope of fitting in my bedroom without causing irreparable damages.” Rose replied, but Lance could hear warmth behind her seemingly uncaring words. 

“Not exactly, we have a mental connection, it’s part of the whole paladin-Lion deal. She’s always - well, usually - with me in my mind. She doesn’t really talk all that often but I can still feel her when she’s there, it’s...comforting. And it makes us a better team! We all need to be in sync to form Voltron-”

“But she isn’t with you right now?”

“...No” Lance sighed, wringing his hands together. “So far, when I come to Derse, she can’t come with me. Her astrophysical form just doesn’t carry over. I thought it was interference from the Galra weapons at first, but it turns out that that isn’t the reason why we’re getting severed. It’s so cold without her and Derse is honestly so uncomfortable to feel, it’s just not the same, I don’t know how you guys are so used to it.”

At the lack of reply, Lance looked up from his hands and found Rose’s face deep in thought, her hands unmoving between the needles and wool. “What?” he asked, after the moment dragged on for too long.

“You can feel Derse the same way you can feel Blue?”

“Well I don’t know if it’s the planet or whatever but there is something there, in the back of my mind, a low whirring- wait, what do you know about the Incipisphere?” Lance asked, remembering the word suddenly. Maybe that was the answer to his connection issues.

“It’s the dimension we’re currently in, where most of the gameplay takes place. Derse is located in close proximity to the Furthest Ring, a spatially and temporally indeterminate void that separates Sburb sessions. Luckily for us and the dersites, we're loosely separated from that region by the Veil’s belt of asteroids.” Rose replied, and Lance was almost surprised at her knowledge. Dave had been more or less right about Rose’s helpfulness, but had conveniently forgotten to mention her other-worldly sass. 

Gameplay. Dave had mentioned a Game to him too. How did this all fit together? And there was that word again - temporal. Lance’s face slackened as questions ran to his lips. Instead of pounding Rose with questions, he let her continue, he’d need time to organize his thoughts anyways.

“From what you’ve told me of your world, you definitively exist outside the game, and potentially in an alternate reality. Your mental connection with your cat-friend may be leaving you vulnerable to other planes of reality, allowing your consciousness to snag on other existences given the proper prompting.” She started, eyes flickering with thought, as if reading. “The next logical question would then be what is the catalyst of your movement to Derse.”

Rose left the question open-ended, giving Lance the chance to participate in their investigation of sorts.

“You...You mentioned that the Furthest Ring was spatially and temporally indeterminate. Does that mean that it has high temporal energy?” Lance asked, walking across the small room to join Rose at the foot of the bed.

“It means that it has both high and low energy simultaneously. Think of Schrodinger's cat in the box, both dead and alive until observed by a second party.”

Lance hummed in thought. Their current mission had to do with startlingly high levels of temporal energy alongside the plasmatech readings, pointing towards the idea that the Galra had developed advanced new combat technology. What if Keith was right and the readings weren’t from the emissions of weapons? What if somehow Rose and Dave’s Incipisphere was bleeding over into his world and the Castle was picking it up?

“Our current mission is investigating a Galran weapons test, they’re targeting an innocent planet in unclaimed space. The Castle picked up insanely high readings of temporal energy, which is normally just used for space travel, so we’ve assumed that the Galra have found a way to weaponize it. But...what if it’s your ‘reality’, the unstable void part, that we’re picking up?”

“It’s possible, though highly unlikely, that the Furthest Ring alone would be responsible for any cross-over time shenanigans. Again, there must be some description of catalysing event.” Rose puzzled, a frown pulling at her lips. She didn’t like not knowing. 

Lance was starting to get disturbingly used to not knowing.

***

“Lance!” Shiro yelled, arms raising in an impossible attempt to protect Lance’s head from the blow against the table. Hunk quickly pulled his unconscious buddy up from the metal surface and slumped him back into his seat, trying to shake him awake.

“Lance! Lance, buddy, wake up! C-Coran, what’s wrong with him?!” Hunk worried, holding Lance’s face in his palms. He was breathing, his expelled air warm against Hunk’s skin, but it was shallow. Everyone at the table was in shock, the blue paladin hadn’t given any indication of sickness, or legitimate fatigue. 

“I-I have no idea, let’s get him to the medical bay and I’ll run some scans” Coran replied, equally shocked by Lance’s collapse. 

“Hunk, Pidge, go with Coran to the medical bay. Shiro and Keith, come with me, we’ve got another problem” Allura commanded, leaping from the table, almost out of the room by the time the others were on their feet with Lance. 

“What other problem?” Shiro called out, intense concern spreading over his face. What could be more important tha Lance right now?

“It’s Blue! She’s wrecking the flight bays, I can feel her, she’s screaming for Lance!” Allura yelled back over her shoulder, running towards the Lion’s wing. Keith and Shiro sprinted after her, their hearts beating heavily and at record pace in their chests as they headed towards Blue. Hopefully they could find a way to calm the raging Lion while they figured out what was wrong with Lance.

Hunk picked up his buddy bridal-style, hurriedly carrying the Cuban teen to the med bays in Coran and Pidge’s wake.

Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man i've really got a thing for cliffhangers, whoops, stay tuned for next Thursday when shit goes down :)
> 
> also Rose is so hard to write, jesus, respect to Rose rp people because damn. if anyone has tips i'd be glad to hear them, i'm normally a strider-centric writer so any help is welcome. 
> 
> thanks again for the love <3


	7. Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Lance's collapse, Blue goes crazy, though not for the reason Keith and Shiro expect.  
> Coran, Hunk, and Pidge find no physical reason for their friend's comatose state, but discover an interesting tie with the temporal energy readings.  
> After the confusion, the team comes together to start the process of waking up Lance. How difficult will it be? To be determined...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys again for all the support, I am so happy that people are liking this, it makes my day :)  
> Just so you guys know, I have some odd hc names for the Lions - Hunk calls his Alohi (shining, in Hawaiian, because yellow is just weird and his lion is a staaar) and Shiro calls his Sora (a japanese name that can mean 'sky', because again, black is a weird name). Red and Blue go by Red and Blue because why not. Pidge hasn't mentioned her lion really yet, so I'll save that for later.
> 
> This chapter is mostly from either Hunk, Keith, or Shiro's perspective - kinda bounces around 
> 
> thanks again for the love, you guys are friggin awesome
> 
> -GK

When Keith burst into the Blue Lion’s flight bay, toes tail-gating Allura’s heels, he lost his breath. The Lion had pounded fractures into the metal walls of the massive containment centre, killing the lights in certain areas and exposing the inner mechanics of the ship wherever her claws punctured the material. She stood at attention in the middle of the space, tail lashing in agitation, and she growled as the three approached her. Keith felt hot as her piercing yellow eyes locked onto him, he felt translucent, and the sensation made his stomach churn a bit. Say what you will about Blue being friendly, she was absolutely frightening to behold when in anger. Or was it confusion?

Maybe both. 

Maybe Hunk should’ve been the one to come, he was the most tolerated by the other paladin’s Lions. Other than Lance, that is. 

Lance.

Like what the fuck. Keith was beyond confused at his teammate’s loss of consciousness, and admittedly extremely concerned. Lance was the kind of person who powered through anything thrown his way, and in this fashion he was similar to Keith. Put simply, and without any inferred romance, the collapse was immediately worrisome. 

Keith felt Red rumbling in his chest, and felt slightly more at ease. Red knew when to comfort him, and when to push him. This time, however, his Lion’s encouragement felt forced, maybe a little frantic, and definitely not like her usual confident self. Whatever was making Blue upset was having a huge effect on his Lion, perhaps out of sympathy. As Keith glanced at Shiro, who stood equally motionless beside him, the teen guessed that Red wasn’t the only Lion reaching out to Blue. Shiro’s was too. And probably Hunk’s and Pidge’s as well.

The exposed circuitry in the walls sparked every few seconds, the only noise in the bay besides Blue slow, deep growl, and the paladin’s quick breaths. Neither Keith nor Shiro knew what to say, or what to do. 

Allura took a cautious step forward, her eyes warm but determined, and her lips pressed firmly together. As the Altean continued her slow approach, Blue’s growl grew deeper. Allura could feel the Lion’s pain and confusion, her blind anger, but it wasn’t directed at her or the paladins. Clearly, Blue was just worried about Lance. Or was it more than that? Before hounding the Lion with questions, the Altean princess thought it best to calm Blue down first. To reassure her. It was safest for everyone that way.

But how?

Yes, she had a connection with the Lions, and it was nothing to sniff at, but this discussion would require a more intimate member of the team, someone Blue truly considered family. Like another Lion. 

She would need Shiro’s help for this. 

Turning slowly to face him, Allura calmly gestured for him to come forward. Keith stayed further back, decidedly acting as backup should Blue decide to attack them.

Shiro carefully stepped up to Allura’s side, with questions in his eyes. 

“I need you to connect with Sora, Shiro, and to ask her to speak with Blue on our behalf” Allura began, with a low voice. Tension was thick in the air, and coiled like a spring. Shiro nodded, his white hair ghosting over his forehead. She tried not to forget herself in the dark pools of his quiet eyes. More pressing things were at play.

Taking a deep breath, the pilot closed his eyes and reached out to his Lion. He felt her unfurl in his mind, and when he opened his eyes again he was on the astrophysical plane. This was not what he’d expected. Before him stood his Lion in her true, less robotic form. Massive and terrifying and beautiful and powerful all at the same time. Sora, more smoke and sky than physical Lion, was lounging with her forearms spread towards him. But there was a stiffness to her posture. 

“Sora, Lance...something is wrong with Lance and Blue is worried- she’s destroying the bays, actually. We’re doing all we can to help Lance right now, but we need her to calm down. I know that she’s scared and confused, but so are we, and we can’t focus on her paladin’s well being if we’re too busy keeping her from destroying the Castle-”

YOU THINK SHE DOES NOT KNOW THIS?

Shiro startled.

MY SISTER IS MANY THINGS BUT SHE IS NOT STUPID

SHE IS WORRIED

AND SHE HAS INFORMATION

The wheels in Shiro’s mind spun madly, of course Blue wasn’t stupid, that’s not was he was insinuating, but they hadn’t considered the fact that she may only have been acting out for the sake of getting their attention.

“W-What does she know? Can we speak with her?”

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME LANCE HAS BEEN GONE

***

When Hunk got to the infirmary, Lance was placed on a monitoring bed within seconds, slack limbs sprawled over the cool, smooth surface. Coran was quick to initialize the general health scan (GHS), fingers tapping with a practised speed over the Altean interactive displays. Hunk could only guess at how many times the older fellow had needed to run this machine, but knew it to be more than anyone would ever want to. 

The only visible sign of ailment was the bruise forming on the left side of his forehead from the impact with the dining table, and even that had been after the initial blackout. Hunk studied his buddy’s face with worry, Lance’s stillness much too unnatural for his comfort level. This was not the first time Hunk had seen Lance unconscious. It had happened a few times since becoming paladins, particularly after the bombing in the bridge. 

But this incident still brought the Hawaiian teen back to when the pair of them had been at the Garrison. Before they’d even met Pidge. Back when they were still being evaluated for class placement. Hunk had, unsurprisingly, thrown up after the Aerotrim screening. Lance on the other hand, still tired from his recently acquired jetlag and climate adjustment, had blacked out. One of the technicians had to pull him from the seat within the spinning gyroscope, and Hunk was assigned to stay with him until he regained consciousness. The birth of an odd, but beautiful, friendship. 

Love hit Hunk hard in his gut, and his fists clenched as he watched Coran flitting around his friend with a mix of worry and professionalism. Pidge was sprawled yet again on the floor with her laptop collection of scanners, eyes flickering wildly as she consumed what Hunk assumed to be more of the Castle’s flight data. He couldn’t blame her for working so obsessively, everyone coped differently.

Hunk happened to cope by not coping at all really, and his breath hitched in his chest. But he would not succumb to the panic, the fear of his best friend getting hurt. Lance deserved more than that.

“From what I can tell, there’s nothing physically wrong with him, other than being overtired. But from what I’ve observed of you bunch, that isn’t too out of the ordinary. Do humans commonly pass out from fatigue?” Coran asked after puzzling away at the monitors.

“I mean, yah I guess, syncope. But that’s only under more extreme circumstances, and from what I know, Lance sleeps pretty alright” Hunk replied, shrugging his shoulders. “The guy worships beauty sleep, heh heh” 

 

The laugh is forced.

“Well then, I guess we’ll cross that of the list, my boy” Coran sighs, returning to the main display units on the side of the bed. “But the GHS isn’t picking up anything else troublesome- Oh!”

Hunk startled at Coran’s sudden outburst, and immediately hoped that it was due to good news.

He was wrong.

“Lance’s brain activity is...unnaturally low” the orange-haired Altean started, the pads of his fingers swiftly pulling up for info on his data talet. “As in, he’s experiencing something similar to coma”

Hunk’s heart sunk. This was not good. Then a thought hit him.

“Keith...ugh...Keith punched him during training yesterday. Which was pretty much justified, but still, do you think that has something to do with...this?”

“I doubt it, my boy, there’s no swelling - from neither the punch nor the table. I can’t seem to find any catalysing event. No swelling or bleeding due to trauma, he has regular blood composition - Lance is in fighting form yet he’s completely unresponsive”

As if to make his point, Coran promptly backhanded the unconscious teen across the face.

“Coran!” 

“You see?”

“Yes, I see, now enough!” Hunk replied, albeit motherly. He looked away as Coran ran a few more scans, who opened Lance’s unresponsive eyes and passed a light by them. Pricked his finger. Anything to try and elicit a response. But to no avail.

Coran didn’t want to risk administering any Altean drugs, given their untested effects on humans, and the healing pods wouldn’t help Lance any at this point. 

“Um, guys?”

Hunk turned his head to Pidge, who was looking at them worriedly from the floor. She took their silence as an indicator to continue. 

“I was going through the timeline for the Castle’s energy readings, and I think there’s more going on here than just Lance randomly passing out.”

“What do you mean, young paladin?” Coran asked, hungry for an answer to Lance’s condition.

“The temporal energy readings were steadily increasing as we approach the Galra, but since gaining proximity the levels have become more erratic. Energy spiked the exact moment Lance lost consciousness in the dining room. I’m beginning to believe that the two events are related.” Pidge started, eyes still locked onto her computer screen. “I have no clue how, but the fluctuations are having some sort of effect on Lance - and I bet Blue knows about it”

As if on cue, a loud, all-consuming voice resonates throughout the paladins’ minds. 

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME LANCE HAS BEEN GONE

What?

Dizzy, Hunk blinked the nausea from his vision. Pidge looked to be in a similar state of distress. 

“Who was that?” Hunk asked, voice a bit shaky. It had to have been a Lion.

“Who was what?” Coran asked, clearly unaffected.

“Blue. She spoke to us” Pidge replied, re-adjusting her glasses. Hunk nodded in agreement to her conclusion. 

“This isn’t the first time Lance has blacked out like this” 

***

Within moments of Blue speaking, Shiro was thrown back into his body. Two Lions occupying his mind was apparently his limit for the moment. Allura was there to catch him as he stumbled and recovered from the side effects. 

“I heard it too” She said, face taut with tension. 

Keith sprinted forward and helped Shiro stand, already having shaken off his own dizziness. 

Blue was sitting now, looking more relaxed, though clearly still upset. And understandably so. Allura’s eyes widened as the blue Lion lowered herself further to a laying position, her massive face resting on the ground only feet from them. The Lions had their own set of body language, similar to those of feline’s, normally undetectable to humans and Alteans alike. But this posture was clear in it’s intentions. Blue wanted to talk. 

So talk they would.

“Keith, get to the Medical Wing as quickly as you can and tell Coran and the others come down here - and bring Lance” Allura quickly commanded, as she lowered herself into a cross-legged sitting position. Shiro followed suite, and flashed Keith a thankful and encouraging smile. Keith, throat slightly closed with leftover worry, nodded again, and ran from the room. He could feel Red urging him onward, and her faith in him was all consuming. There was nothing quite like a Lion’s love, he decided, as proved by previous events.

When he burst into the infirmary, Keith was surprised to see Lance just laying on the bed-like thing, with no wires or monitors attached. In fact, most of them were inactive. Only a simple visual chart of his teammate’s vitals was active. He looked away. The set-up reminded him of the hospital. He hated hospitals.

He really didn’t want to lose anyone else. 

Especially not Lance. 

“Keith! Is Blue-” Hunk started, worry creeping into his voice.

“She’s fine, she wants us to meet her in the flight bays - to talk”

“She said this wasn’t the first time Lance ‘was gone’, what does that mean?” Pidge asked, hurriedly collecting her tech up off the floor. 

“I’m not sure, but I’m sure she’ll explain once we’re all there” Keith replied, chest still heavy with breath from sprinting so quickly. The Castle corridors were longer than he’d thought. 

“Hurry then, paladins. I’ll watch over Lance while you’re gone” Coran offered, determination growing in his voice.

“Actually, Coran, Allura wants you there - with Lance”

Coran quirked his head, but didn’t question Keith further. He trusted the Princess’s judgement. If she wanted him there, than by Altea he’d be there, even if it was with a comatose Lance.

“Well come on then lads, no time to lose! Hunk, Keith, grab Lance and go - he’s fine to move just watch his head” The Altean man bellowed, grabbing his tablet from the bed. Pidge followed the other two paladins out of the room as they left with Lance slung between them, followed closely by Coran.

The travel between the sectional wings was a bit slower than Keith had managed on his own, but they made good time nonetheless.

Hunk’s jaw dropped at the destruction of the flight bay, and at Allura and Shiro sitting within breathing distance of a seemingly calm Blue. A shocking juxtaposition to say the least.

Blue’s eyes visibly brightened and her jaw opened as Lance was hauled into the room. She shuffled her massive paws backward to make more room for the arriving paladins. 

“Hunk, Keith, bring Lance here and come sit, we’ve much to discuss about his condition.” Allura asked, patting the space on the floor next to her. The yellow and red paladin's carried their friend forward without further pause, and layed him down the the middle of their makeshift ‘circle-time’. Hunk knelt back from his buddy and sat beside Allura, while Keith retreated to Shiro’s side. 

Blue lowered her face until her muzzle brushed over Lance’s unconscious frame, and she purred into his skin. Tried to wake him.

But bringing him back was not something she could do alone. 

Pidge and Coran arrived at the bay a few moments later, carrying a couple armfuls of tech and monitoring systems. Once the majority of it was set-up and running, Pidge leapt into the circle her team made, her eyes finally resting on Lance. She hadn’t wanted to look. It hurt to look, seeing someone as hyperactive and loud as Lance so quiet and still. It hurt because without the shallow rise and fall of his chest, Lance would look dead.

Pidge did not want to lose another brother.

Coran finally joined the team, still glancing at his data tablet. 

“I’ve halted our approach to the Galra, Princess.”

“Thank you, Coran” Allura smiled, a small comfort she took full advantage of. “As I’m sure you’ve all heard, this is not the first time Lance has been unresponsive”

“Well that’s an understatement” Hunk joked, to ease himself more than anyone else. Blue, still at Lance’s side, chortled, and he smiled. The Hawaiian teen took comfort in the fact that Blue was calm. If Blue could be calm than so could he. 

Allura smirked herself, before continuing. “But before we explore anymore details of the matter we need to pull Lance back to us. Waking him up is our primary focus, and we can figure the rest out later.”

Blue growled a bit, likely wanting to explain more, but ultimately agreed with the princess.

Coran caught onto Allura’s train of thought, and realized why he was there. The paladins would need to reach a new level of their team bond, and with the guidance of himself and Blue, they’d able to reach out to Lance’s consciousness and hopefully wake him up. 

“Indeed! Now, this procedure is quite a lot trickier than anything you’ve done before, paladins, but I know you can do it if you set your minds to it. Lance is counting on it.” Coran explained, curving an eyebrow. “Lance’s connection with Blue leaves an imprint on her astrophysical form, as she does to him. A perk of the paladin bond. With your combined cognitive functions, and overarching team Voltron bond, it’s likely that you could find and follow the imprint back to Lance. Once you find him, it shouldn’t be hard to bring him back to consciousness.”

The team nodded, all of them more than ready to pour their hearts and souls into this search-and-rescue mission. Lance laid unmoving at their feet, a silent reminder of the importance of their success. 

No one asked what would happen if they couldn’t find him.

Because no one wanted to consider it a possibility.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT CHAPTER COMES OUT SATURDAY YAY (I was more productive in my free time this week) - stay tuned for the fun times to come :)


	8. Awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose helps Lance fill in some of the gaps in his understanding of her and Dave's world. Meanwhile, Hunk and the rest of team Voltron enter the deepest level of group bonding they've explored so far. Will their efforts prove to be successful?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 700+ views
> 
> I'm dead haha (metaphorically of course)
> 
> Thank you all so much for the awesome comments, it really helps me keep writing for this fic. Also, your ideas are so cool and awesome and the second opinions are really helping make this crossover more in depth and interesting. 
> 
> Platonic internet hug,
> 
> -GK

Lance sat on Rose’s bed, quiet in contemplation and more than a little bit upset. Rose continued to knit, giving the blue paladin a moment to think. What if his friends were fighting the Galra right now, and he wasn’t awake to help? What if...What if they were hurt, or dead? Dying? Lance cuts that train of thought off, he couldn’t let himself believe that. His body couldn’t hold that much guilt.

Not that this was his fault.

The tired teen feels hollow as he remembers his last few moments in his body before falling unconscious, and let out a deep, marginally comforting sigh. What would they think of him, passed out on the table? What were they doing right now, talking about, thinking of? He hoped that they’d be able to figure this shit out on their side. Pidge and Coran would probably find something, or maybe Blue could talk to Allura. 

“That was a deep sigh” Rose stated, finally setting her needles aside, beginnings of some type of scarf tied to their poles. Lance couldn’t understand her nonchalance, he was seriously going out of his mind. Maybe she was just used to this kind of stuff.

“Yah…” Lance replied, unsure of where he was going with the statement. “I’m just...thinking.”

“Well, don’t injure yourself.” Rose smirked, lightening the mood. “For what it’s worth, they must be great friends for you to care so much.”

Lance smiled. Yes they were. And they would come for him, somehow, they’d wake him up. 

Right?

At this point, Blue would normally butt into his thoughts and tell him to stop pitying himself, to stop doubting himself. But she wasn’t here, so Lance had to break away from the self deprecation unassisted. They would help him. His friends, his team. Hunk wouldn’t rest until he was back, Lance knew that for certain. Keith? Lance didn’t want to think about Keith.

“So what’s with the whole ‘game’ thing you and Dave keep talking about? Can I play? There’s nothing to do here, besides banter, so I could really go for a round of Smash or something”

Rose allowed herself a sharp laugh, and shook her head. Lance was fascinated by the way it tossed her platinum blonde hair, which even when shaken still looked precise in placement. 

“Well, technically speaking, you already are. This is the game, Sburb, or a sequence of it at least. Though, I’m not acting particularly productive at the moment, having awoken here likely due to fatigue.”

“So...I’m in it?”

“Affirmative. Though not as a player, or even as a scripted participant. You are...something. An observer, or visitor perhaps” 

A pause.

“Sburb?”

“Indeed”

“What the fuck kind of name is Sburb?”

“I haven’t the slightest”

Lance scrunched up his eyebrows, puzzling madly at the weirdness of the situation. 

“...So like what, a VR game?” he asked.

“Sburb’s gameplay is designed closer to that of Augmented Reality. It’s superimposed over real space, rather than generating an artificial one, for the player’s to act in.” Rose replied, happy to provide information. 

“Okay so you turn on the good ol’ Xbox and then what, boom - you’re in the game?” Lance questions, still confused at the mechanics. Was Derse, or was Derse not, a real place? Where was he? The Incipisphere, okay, but where was that? Lance was not good with all this multidimensional bullshit. 

“Not exactly. It’s PC, and the game is initiated by the server and client disks.”

Lance didn’t reply. Was Rose from the same Earth? The last game development Lance remembered before he left for space was Vive and other VR headsets and the greatly anticipated Nintendo Switch. Or has technology changed that much since leaving Earth?

“So Dave’s running the game as well?”

“Yes,” Rose began, “though in a feat of irony, he spilt apple juice over his disks and rendered them more or less useless. This, and avians prompted him to foolishly defenestrate them. Luckily, Bro had copies.”

“How many people are in this game other than you and Dave?!” Lance exclaimed. 

“Thus far you’ve heard mention of one John Egbert, and have encountered Dave and myself. Our fourth main campaigner is Jade Harley, who, like John, is a Prospit dreamer.”

“Rose, I’m getting tired of being shocked, confused, and then asking questions - what is Prospit?” The blue paladin exclaimed, frustrated at his lack of understanding for Rose’s world. 

“Prospit, as in Derse’s sibling dreamworld, whose colouration mainly consists of vibrant jaunes. Players have dream selves on one of the two worlds, which encourages greater productivity in the game as well as offers an extra life of sorts.” Rose stated, standing up from her bed and walking over to her laptop. “We keep in touch by pestering each other online should the internet service be conducive to communication.”

Another planet, like this. Wrapped in harsh archways and sleek spires, monochromatic in an alien way, and humming with a cold pulse. There was so much to know, Lance felt like his mouth could never shape enough questions, despite his thirst for answers. He had enough trouble keeping his own universe outlined in his mind, what with the clusterfuck of politics choking both claimed and unclaimed space as a result of the Galra war. Hell, he had enough on his plate with Zarkon without dragging his failing bond with Blue into the mix.

Why him?

That was one of the biggest questions vibrating at the forefront of his mind. He knew Rose couldn’t answer it, and it was unfair of him to blame her for it, but Lance couldn’t help but look for something to blame. Something other than himself.

The only indication Lance gave of hearing Rose’s reply was huffing with a quiet thoughtfulness as he returned to her window. 

Derse was dark. 

He wondered if Prospit had the same black sky. The name sounded kinder at the very least. Lance had never been afraid of the dark, but he was wary of it. He found the lack of stars chilling, and lonely. But as he looked out over the purple city, Lance’s eyes caught on something moving, and out of place along one of the railed pathways between buildings. 

A...person? 

Some kind of being, small with a jet black complexion. They wore an obnoxiously coloured outfit with various clashing colours, though in a simple, peasant-like fashion. As Lance looked closer down to the roots of the spiked towers he could make out more, small movements of people. 

“Ughh...Rose?! We’re you expecting company or are these guys party crashing?” He asked the analytical girl worriedly, pointing to them out of her window. He hadn’t noticed any of these individuals during his previous visit. That, and Dave hadn’t mentioned that the planet was legitimately populated. Granted, Dave hadn’t explained much of anything.

Without looking up from her computer, Rose answered him calmly and with no hesitation. Lance couldn’t help but think of Pidge, and he ignored the pit growing in his stomach.

“Those are the Dersites, they inhabit this planet, though on a permanent conscious basis, unlike most players.”

“I...didn’t notice them last time”

“I withdraw my earlier comment on your cognitive dexterity”

“What- Hey, you can’t do that! And I’m serious, I never saw any, and I was on ground level last time” Lance blurted, crossing his arms defensively. Rose made a mental note of his comment, but pestered him no further.

“Also, you said ‘most’ players. What does that mean?”

“I have hypothesized in the past that Dave’s dream self remains conscious, if only minimally, even while he is awake in other parts of The Medium-”

“Wait, so he’s awake right now? Can we go see him?” Lance interrupted, excited at this new development. Three minds worked better than two, in Lance’s experience.

“Well that would depend on your definition of awake, Dave’s dream self spends the majority of his time here on his computer. I shudder to think of his activities online” Rose sighed, placing her hands on her hips in mock motherly disapproval. “But if you were to approach him, his mind would likely prioritize his dream self and provide full attention.”

“Where is he, then?” Lance asked, “Where’s his room?”

“In relation to mine, right across that way” Rose indicated out her window. A matching tower rose up beside theirs off to the left. Lance hadn’t seen it in his peripheral vision. He remembered being high up in Dave’s room, or ‘tower’, and he realised with a start that Rose’s was at an identical altitude. He should have made the connection. Oh well.

“So do we walk and then elevator or…?”

Rose gave him a shit-eating grin, and promptly leaped out of the open window.

“Wha- Rose!” He yelled, reaching for her too slowly to have been any saving grace.

Not that she needed saving.

Lance’s eyelids peeled back in obvious shock as Rose levitated outside the window, entirely afloat and flying. What the actual fuck.

“Fucking fuck, what the fucking hell, Rose don’t do that to me - I can’t be alone here! And...And you’re flying! Like, flying flying, like superman kind of flying, without any...jetpack...or...anything...what-” Lance was babbling now, how much like a dream was this dream world?

“I neglected to mention that Dave and I are able to travel in this fashion while on Derse. Mostly because it wasn’t relevant at the time, but also because I thrive on the shock of others.”

Lance was breathless, until he wasn’t, and then he only had one thing to say. 

“CAN. I. FLY. TOO?”

“I would be intrigued to find out.”

***

When Hunk opened his eyes, all he could see was black.

His initial reaction was too feel uneasy, but within moments of losing his vision he felt comforted by the presence of his team. He couldn’t explain it, the sensation that bloomed in his chest, it was hot and cold at the same time. Ultimately, it was reassuring.

Coran had guided Shiro, Keith, Hunk and Pidge through the first few levels of paladin bond, but now, in deeper than any of them had ever been, they were on their own. The older Altean’s instructions sounded loudly in their collective minds.

In order to follow Blue’s imprint on Lance, they needed to surrender several their regular human senses. The first one to go was hearing, within the first few minutes of meditation the team had slowly drifted away from hearing Coran’s voice. But this didn’t just mean hearing in external stimuli.

It also meant drifting away from their own internal voices, the one that you read and think with.

Hunk was a void, filled only by the chilling heat of his friends. 

Keith was the warmest, walking that pleasure-pain line the way suntanning did back home in Hawaii. 

Shiro was warm too, but...thinner. Closer to smoke, or cloud. Like the friction in a thunderstorm.

Pidge was the coolest of the three, her presence crisp and clear and dewey. The Hawaiian teen could feel the sensation spreading in his core like roots.

Hunk could only guess at what he felt like to the others. Whatever the sensation, he hoped it was a reassuring as theirs were to him.

The thoughts were soundless in his mind, more picture and instinct than anything stated in sentence. 

The next sense to leave him was touch.

There was no floor beneath him, no breath in his lungs. He was bodiless and floating, and it was both terrifying and mesmerizing at the same time. Despite the urgency of their situation, Hunk couldn’t help but feel at peace. Calm. Liquid in serenity. There was something beautiful about this bond, and Hunk would’ve smiled had he the muscle control as he felt his teammates agree.

They would have to show this to Lance when they got him back.

He had no balance. He had no balance because there was no physical orientation, and he had no physical body here to orientate anyways.

The bond grew deeper.

And then they saw it.

Or maybe felt it. Heard it? Everything was mixing together and it was impossible to tell what receptor picked him up but something did pick him up.

Lance.

Lance was loud, and soft, and the strangest most beautiful kind of fluid. He was gelid enough to burn and the warmth ignited the space around the paladins until all they could focus on was his presence.

They could feel him, a ghost of him, at the furthest edge of their collective awareness and the closer they pulled themselves toward him the more bearable their separation got. When they had him, had him resonating with their own hots and colds and impossible sensations, Blue lept into action.

The connection established, she shot through them like electricity streaking through livewire and it was blinding in every possible way. For a moment, the black was gone, and Hunk could see a flash of purple, the blur of buildings whizzing past his ears, a black sky above his head and he was weightless and-

He was falling.

Lance was falling.

Until he wasn’t.

And when he wasn’t falling, he was on the floor of Blue’s flight bay screaming in complete and utter agony.

Gasping, Hunk was back in his body, his heartrate on fire and sweat pouring down his face. It took him a moment to regain his sight, to recognize his body again. He had fallen over, no longer sitting but sprawled on his side on the cold Castle floor. Pidge was shaking as she pulled herself back to a sitting position. Keith was already moving, staggering to his knees and crawling forward. Shiro was beside him, pulling himself towards Lance with just as much drive and twice the determination.

Allura was at Blue’s feet, and in her arms Lance seized before sucking in a large, borderline painful breath.

He wasn’t flying with Rose. He was home.

He wasn’t falling from Derse’s blurry air. He was home. 

He hadn’t crashed. 

He was home.

The phantom pain left his limbs and Lance almost cried out in relief. Blue was wrapped around him mentally in an instant, her purring hot and alive in his chest. As he opened his eyes, Lance saw Allura at his side, looking at him with intense relief. The relief was entirely mutual as he saw the rest of his team moving towards him with grins on their faces, all very much alive and not dead. 

He was awake. There was a ton of shit to figure out still, and Lance could hear the questions in Hunk’s eyes as he pulled his buddy in for a hug. He hoped Hunk would see the underlying confusion in his own. That he knew it wasn’t his fault. 

Blue curled her tail around them protectively, making sure to include Coran in their group hug, before making a disgruntled noise.

Lance was awake, but that by no means solved all their problems.

In fact, the majority of their problems were yet to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is at this point that I will ask for your opinions on shippy stuff. Romance is not by any means the main focus, but I want it to be tastefully present nonetheless.  
> Your options? Klance, Dave x Lance, and Rose x lance.
> 
> EDIT: Thanks for all the feedback everyone! Pairing will start as Dave/Lance (Dance) for now. Probably with mild jealous!keith. As the space shenanigans resolve, klance will potentially emerge :)
> 
> ALSO update today has been postponed until Friday May 12 because life got busy and I havent edited the next chapter yet :/ thanks for your understanding!! <3
> 
> -GK


	9. Event Horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team is finally reunited, and Lance has the opportunity to explain what he can to his friends of Derse, and Dave's world.  
> However, with pressing matters at hand, team Voltron must put the rest of the conversation on hold to deal with a Galran armada.  
> What weapons will they be faced with?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!  
> I don't think you can ever say thank you too many times so -Thank you guys so much again for all the support!  
> Just to confirm - you may see some 'Dance' in later chapters, followed by endgame klance (again, romance is not the focus here, but I want some tasteful hints at it hehe)
> 
> Also sometimes I have busy weeks, and need to change my weekly update time (sorry....that's just life sometimes haha), but I thank you for your understanding :)
> 
> Space embrace,
> 
> -GK

“Thank you”

Lance broke the silence, bringing his eyes up to meet those of his team. They sat more or less in a pile at Blue’s chest, Hunk resting with a quiet arm slung over his friend. Everyone was breathing heavily, save for Allura and Coran, energy spent from diving so deep into their paladin bond.

No one was really sure how to respond, so Shiro stepped up to the plate and reached his hand out to Lance to make some kind of physical contact. 

“You are more than welcome Lance,” he smiled, thankful to have the energetic teen awake again. “I...we...don’t know what happened, but we’re glad to have you back. We were getting pretty worried.”

“Glad to be...back,” Lance breathed, then froze with wide eyes and an increased heart rate.

“What about the Galra?! Did- did you guys engage, did they attack, was-”

“No, Lance, we haven’t made any contact with them yet. We’ve halted our approach for the moment,” Allura replied, shaking her head reassuringly. “...until...we get this sorted out, I suppose.”

“Do we have that kind of time?” Pidge asked, not uncaringly, but practically. Allura knit her eyebrows together, clearly conflicted as to how they should proceed. There was a planet at risk, and Galra to stop. Lance was okay for the moment, it would seem.

“For what it’s worth,” The blue paladin piped up, “I don’t think the Galra are testing weapons.”

Confusion spread in the span of a pause.

“What do you mean, Lance?” Allura inquired, curious of where the thought came from. Keith gave the other teen a tilt of his head, equally intrigued, and the red paladin sat up a bit straighter.

“The energy readings, I think they’re being emitted by something else, or...somewhere else, I guess” Lance started, albeit awkwardly. He was not used to this many people listening to him wholeheartedly at once. “I...go somewhere, when I dream now. It - this - it happened last night too, I don’t know why. But long story short, there’d this planet called Derse and it’s in a video game that’s also kind of an alternate reality, and I woke up there and met these other kids - the players - and Rose, the smart one, she thinks that the game is somehow crossing over into our reality and we’re picking up the temporal energy from some scripted in-game event...or something...I…don’t think...it’s Galra weapons...”

Lance slowed his explanation to a stop as his friends gave him comically incredulous looks. Even Shiro had his face twisted in confusion, and Lance hated the doubt growing in his eyes. He should have seen it coming, of course they wouldn’t believe him. 

How could they?

Blue growled, low and predatory, in his chest. The others felt it too. She was urging them to consider her paladin’s words, and threat hanged heavy at the end of her rumble.

Enough, Blue, Lance thought as he cast his eyes downward. 

A pause.

“So the purple city, that was Derse?” Hunk replied, with a trust in his voice. 

Lance’s head whipped around so fast it kinked and he rubbed it subconsciously as he stared at Hunk, jaw agape.

“Yah! Yah, that’s the place, you saw it?!” He questioned, glad for the support. 

“Mh-hm,” Hunk nodded, making the connection. “When we came for you, we saw you...or...through your eyes I guess. There was this massive city, all old gothic architecture and everything was PURPLE!”

“The sky was so...black” Keith added, frowning in deep thought, remembering what they had all seen when Blue reconnected with Lance. 

Shiro’s face relaxed as he too recalled the sight, and Pidge nodded slowly to herself as well.

“You...were falling” She said, remembering the twisting of her stomach and the blur of moving buildings.  
“Heh-heh, yah, I was” Lance replied, rubbing the back of his neck in slight embarrassment. “Don’t think I’m complaining, but you guys picked a pretty bad time to help me back. Rose was helping me fly-”

“FLY?” Coran yipped, mustache twitching excitedly. “Lance, you never told me humans could fly! The physiology, it doesn’t make sense-”

“No, no, Coran, we don’t fly. But Derse is a dreamworld in the game, so you can do weird dream shit like flying I guess. Dave can fly too, and Rose.”

“Dave and Rose, they’re...players?” Allura asked, arching an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean by ’game’, Lance.” 

Lance sighed, and slowly shook his head. “I’m not sure I do either, guys, I’m only parroting what they told me. But basically, they’re from Earth. Maybe...A different Earth, but Earth, and they’re playing this AR game that lets you…” Lance paused. He’d never asked the point of the game, who its enemies or bosses were, if it even had any. 

“...well, I don’t totally know what it’s about, but there are real-life effects. Derse is close to this region that’s spatially and temporally indeterminate - the Furthest Ring. I thought that maybe that’s what we’re picking up, but Rose seems to think otherwise.”

Pidge hummed in thought, and ran a few programs on her laptop while Lance continued. This information proved consistent with the sudden flux in temporal energy, or seemed to anyways. Blue had wanted them to talk, so here they were, talking it out. For the moment, anyway, and hopefully to some benefit.

“You should’ve told us, Lance. Whatever is going on here needs more than one brain in on it,” Keith started, and Lance could’ve sworn he heard genuine concern beneath the seemingly accusatory statement. “And Blue, she was worried.”

I was worried, he almost admitted.

“I-I can’t just choose when to go, Keith! It just, happens, I just...pass out. Plus, the timing was really bad, we’d just gotten our next mission, and I didn’t think it was that urgent.” Lance admitted, and Hunk hugged him tighter. This was congruent with how Lance had blacked out earlier, involuntarily, and Keith nodded shallowly in understanding. “The first time, I thought it was just a lucid dream...but it wasn’t. Normally, when I dream, Blue’s with me…”

Lance trailed off.

“...But she wasn’t this time?” Hunk filled in, and Lance nodded. He felt his Lion press herself up against him in his mind. She didn’t need to verbalize her intentions, Lance could feel them. They were together now, and that was a start.

“When the alarms went off this morning, I managed to wake up. Maybe the adrenaline, or something, I don’t know. Maybe you guys just need to blast some tunes when I knock out and I’ll snap out of it.” He joked, allowing himself a small laugh to comfort himself. He was surprised when Hunk didn’t follow suite.

“Lance, buddy...You were totally out. Like, comatose, out. We couldn’t wake you up with any kind of stimulus” Hunk explained, eyes glazing slightly in memory of his friend’s slack limbs. 

He squeezed Hunk’s hand in reassurance. Somehow, Lance wasn’t surprised at the news. Whatever this dreaming-walking was, it was having more and more of an effect on him.

As they got closer and closer to the source of the energy spikes.

“We used the imprint you leave on Blue to find your consciousness, a sense-deprived scavenger hunt of sorts.” Coran added, “When the other paladins found you, Blue was able to tow you back to your body using your bond.”

Lance’s air left him. That would have easily been the most taxing group activity they’ve done with the paladin bond so far. Warm gratitude filled his body as he recognized his team’s caring, and their determination. 

“...Thank you, all of you guys, thank you” Lance smiled, a blush on his cheeks. He told himself that those weren’t tears in his eyes, just a trick of the light. He blinked a few times.

“Again,” Shiro emphasized, “You are more than welcome Lance, we wouldn’t be a team without you, of course we did our best to help you.”

“And we will again, if it comes to it.” Keith added, and Pidge smirked and shot the red paladin a knowing glance. He mentally scolds her. As if hearing him, she turns back to her displays, still smiling.

Speaking of displays, Coran began to plug away at his tablet as small windows popped up on the data screen. He didn’t raise the notifications to the group’s attention, however, but merely nodded something to Pidge who immediately started typing.

Allura spoke next, addressing the whole team.

“This is by no means resolved yet, paladins, but given the circumstances we must put this on hold” She explained, her shoulders heavy. Lance didn’t envy the responsibility hanging there.  
“Totally, it’s time to kick some ass” The Cuban teen agreed. 

Anything to feel more in control. 

Forming Voltron, saving the day, that was something he could do. Screw all this temporal shit. He hated its complexity, and even Pidge seemed stumped.

“Well-” Hunk started, his head cocking.

“Hunk, my man, I’m good. Let’s focus on stopping the Galra for now. Even if new weapons aren’t involved, the warships are still there, threatening an innocent planet.”

Hunk sighed, but eventually nodded in agreement.

Shiro helped Lance to his feet, and put a hand on his shoulder, and the blue paladin smiled.

“Good to have you back, sharpshooter.”

Lance grinned.

“Since you’re all already in paladin armour, how about you get to your Lions. Coran has already re-engaged our propulsors” Allura said, rising to her tall and dignified standing position. 

Keith nodded in affirmation, shot a small, quick smile at Lance, Hunk and the others and headed for Red in the adjacent bay. Shiro followed in his wake, moving at a quick jog. Hunk signed ‘I love you’ to Lance, who immediately returned the gesture. Coran and Allura left next, talking tactically to each other with waving arms as they hurriedly made their way to the bridge.

Pidge was the last to leave. 

Before she did, she walked over to Lance and gave him an awkward side hug. He ruffled her hair, and she shoved him playfully.

“Glad you’re awake” Was all she said, but Lance could hear the love in her voice. “For what it’s worth, I figured that there was a tie between your collapse and the temporal energy readings. When it spiked earlier, you passed out.”

Lance nodded thoughtfully, processing the connection. 

“You should’ve met Rose, Pidge, she easily rivalled you in sass, and jesus she talked fast. Wordy too, you’ve liked her. Or maybe butted heads with her, heh-heh, I don’t know.”

“And Dave?”  
Lance grew warm as he remembered Dave’s stoic expression and odd eye-wear, and definitely not the way the blond teen’s ropy muscles pressed creases into his purple pajamas.

“The dude tries too hard to be cool, and has a Texan accent. Talks fast, and in lyrics sometimes...but...he was the first player I met on Derse and he was nice I guess.” 

Pidge nodded slowly, and flashed him a too-quick smile. 

“See you out there, Lance.” She called back, as she ran with tech-full arms to her Lion.

“See ya out there, Pidgey”

***

Piloting Blue again was the most beautiful, and reassuring, feeling Lance could think of. Here, at her control panels, seated comfortably in her head cavity, he felt at home. 

The paladins had launched into space early, everyone glad for the calm flight time before the actual battle. Red and Blue looped around each other a few times, rolling in playful somersaults.  
Blue’s mood had ameliorated considerably since having her paladin again, and her rumbling joy was proving to be contagious to the other Lions and paladins alike.

Despite the damage to her flight bay, Lance had managed to guide Blue outside the castle, decidedly leaving the repairs for another time. With the quiet comfort of piloting in his mind, Lance had the opportunity to think.

About Rose. About Dave.

He assumed that they understood the sporadic nature of his visits, and that they didn’t think him hurt or dead. Maybe, they wouldn’t care, even if he did. It’s not like they were from the same world or anything. They’d only just met.

Still, Lance felt bad for leaving so suddenly, and a bit guilty of his relief to be back with his team. The guilt ebbed as Blue rejoiced in flying with him, God he’d missed her. A radial graph was up on display in the upper left of his navigation screen, illustrating the temporal energy readings. Coran had suggested he keep an eye on it himself for any major fluxes. 

It struck him how deep his bond with Blue was, and how empty he had felt without her in his mind. How...wrong. Maybe being the blue paladin was changing him, somehow. He wondered how he’d ever be able to return to Earth without her. He pushed the thought aside. Such notions were for another time. Voltron still had leagues to go until Zarkon was stopped.

Speaking of, voice sounded over the comm systems.  
It was Coran.

“Paladins, we’re being hailed by the Galra. Standby for transmission.”

Lance’s gaze grew steely as a sharp, purple face appeared on his windshield screen. Not Zarkon, though presumably one of his high commanders. The alien sported high, defined cheekbones and slender, backward facing ears. Two sets of small facial horns adorned the initial curve of his jaw.

“Attention, Castle of Lions. My name is Zarath Tass, Grand Admiral of this armada-”

Lance didn’t know if the transmission was two-way, but he hoped the Galran Admiral could see the hate in his blue eyes. 

“-This is Galra-claimed space. On behalf of Zarkon, and his esteemed Empire, it will be my pleasure to address your trespassing, and deliver you to his Lordship to be executed. Do not think you can escape my wrath, paladins, for I have harnessed a new, terrifying technology that will put your Voltron to shame.” 

Technology. The galra did have new tech. Likely, new tech that involved lethal amounts of temporal energy.

Had he and Rose been wrong?

Lance had to hope for the best, but he didn’t like the glinting in Zarath’s eyes. 

He barely had a visual of the warships yet, their forms reduced to small dark specks against the light blue backdrop of the planet at risk. The world was the size of a baseball from here in Lance’s Lion, indicating a fair distance from the action still. Still, Lance knew without asking that his team would keep pressing onward until plasmafire erupted towards them. 

“This is Princess Allura of the planet Altea and I must correct you, Admiral Tass, for this is unclaimed space,” Allura replied over the comms, her voice steady and confident as she addressed the other well spoken leader. “And it will be our pleasure to destroy your forces and rid this planet of your unsightly presence, regardless of your new technology.”

Pride filled Lance at her words, as he watched Zarath flinch in response to her insubordination. 

Gotcha, bitch.

“We shall see, Princess” The admiral replied coolly, and the transmission ended.

 

The Castle gained proximity, the team now able to see the sheer numbers of warships cloaking the curve of the blue planet. From what Lance could tell, there was no land, or none visible from space anyway. But that didn’t mean it was devoid of life, perhaps it was quite the opposite. Either way, determination rose in Lance’s lungs as he focused in for battle.

“Ugh...guys,” Pidge called over the comms, clearly worried. “That ship, the one at the centre of their cluster, it's got an unusually large hull. Coran, can you use the Castle scanners to analyse it?”

“Right away, young paladin, good eye”

The Lions grew closer.

“Guys, I don’t like this, why aren’t they firing?” Keith exclaimed, Red’s movements cautious and calculated.

“I don’t know, team, but we’ve got to keep calm and play this right,” Shiro replied, to Allura’s agreement. “For all we know, this armada is just for show.”

Lance shrugged, but doubted it. Still, whatever they were plotting, Voltron could handle it.

Coran made a strangled noise over the comm before shouting a warning to the paladins.

“Their weapon, it’s emitting tremendous amounts of energy, stockpiling firepower at an impossible rate, watch out paladins! Get back!”

But no shot came.

Lance almost relaxed, before his stomach sank so low he swore it was out of his thoracic cavity.

A tear.

A rip.

A gash.

A scratch in the blackness of space grew across the planet’s cerulean horizon. As if some cat was clawing through space-time like wall paper from the other side.

And the other side, impossible to decipher from blinding light emission. 

Lance vaguely registered the temporal energy reading chart on his monitor flaring up past the available scale rate before he blacked out entirely. Blue screamed for him. Maybe he screamed for her too.

He couldn’t tell, really. 

He was already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit is gonna pick up from now on haha. Also I like star wars (a lootttt) so you may see some similar descriptions in the battle sequences to come~
> 
> For those who were wondering - yes Lance will get godtier eventually. Stay tuned ;)
> 
> As for next chapter, expect to see more from Dave and a shit ton of time shenanigans. <3
> 
> EDIT: I have been down with a fever for the past week, thought I'd be up to cram writing a chapter for you guys this eveing but I feel like shit and I don't want to rush the writing :// I have decided to skip this weeks update (may 18). 
> 
> You guys will get a beefy chapter, maybe two, for next week :) really sorry, but Im sure you understand where im coming from. Thanks :) xoxo
> 
> -GK


	10. Split

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the Scratch, Lance finds himself yet again on Derse in the company of Dave. Or...does he?  
> All that is for certain is that the Galra pose a very real, and hidden, threat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY BALLS GUYS I was not expecting 1000+ views on a niche crossover - shit, this is so cool. I've only ever gotten 1000+ on smut so this is refreshing haha XD
> 
> BIG thanks to everyone who's been commenting consistently as the story progresses - you know who you are, and you are awesome :D your feedback and ideas are friggin raaad
> 
> Also, please note that the fic's archive warnings have been updated - as there is bloody stuff in this chapter (though not concerning Lance, for the time being).
> 
> Space embrace,
> 
> -GK

Lance awoke to a familiar room.

Dave’s room. 

The blue paladin startled into his body, sitting up on Dave’s bed, gasping with brimming eyes. Drinking in his surroundings, Lance gagged as a familiar stench coated the roof of his mouth. 

Blood.

A lot of it.

Lance froze, confused at his own lack of injury. Who’s blood was it then? Lance wandered his eyes to the right of the bed and his stomach melted into his core as the teen registered what was lying not three feet from him, ripped and gutted on the floor. Or rather, who.

Dave’s shades had been knocked off, revealing glazed, stagnant, crimson eyes. The blond teen’s body was splayed out on the floor, twisted at impossible angles and unnaturally slack, slick with blood. Lance retched, covering his mouth as his eyes began to water, both from the reek of metallic gore as well as shocked sadness. All the blue paladin could do was stare for the first few seconds, eyes scarring over at the sight, until nausea forced him to wrench his eyelids shut. 

There was no point shaking the body - Dave’s body - awake. It was blatantly obvious that Dave was dead. That being said, his clothes were different than anything Lance had ever seen him in, a red suit, dressed to the fucking nines, with a broken record on the right breast. Was this - Had this been the ‘awake’ Dave? The one out and about in the game? 

Lance’s gaze dropped to his hands, which rested in his lap as he sat cross-legged on the bed in silence. 

Purple.

Lance was wearing purple. Pajamas, to be specific, and of the eccentric royal sort. The Cuban teen’s heart pounded in an adrenalin-fuelled rhythm as he reached to touch the crescent moon labelled on his chest. He gripped the soft material in his fist, holding it accusatorily, and his face broke into the quiet stretch of silent crying. He couldn’t even bring himself to feel afraid, afraid of who or what had killed Dave. Lance was just done. And exhausted. And alone. And above all else, completely and utterly in the dark. 

“Ugh...Lance?” 

The blue paladin’s head whipped up in search of the source of the voice. The familiar voice.

“D-Dave?!” Lance exclaimed, as the blond teen in question floated through the window in his Derse pajamas and signature aviators. “H-How?! I thought-”

“Well, shit, would ya look at me” Dave interrupted, his shaded eyes gaining purchase on his own corpse at the foot of the bed. His tone was far too relaxed for Lance’s liking. This was not normal. This is not how you respond to seeing your own dead body with zero context.

Or maybe, Dave did have context, Lance realized. 

“Why are you dead, ON THE FLOOR?!” Lance exploded, “Are you him, or is he him, or are you both...you?!”

“I’m me, and he’s me, just under different circumstances. I’m asleep Dave, and he’s a dead Dave. Surprised he turned up here, though.” The other teen offered, shrugging his shoulders. “Guess I won’t go after that motherfucking thieving-ass dersite after all.”

“So, what, you get nines lives in the game or some shit?” Lance barked, still distressed.

“Nah, man, I mean, most players get two bodies to start with - Dreamer and Player - but there are loopholes,” Dave started, running a hand through his combed hair, the movement slowing as he read Lance’s expression. “Complicated as fuck temporal loopholes…”

The blond teen’s head tilted in concern.

“You okay, bro? Look kinda pale” Dave offered, hidden eyes locked onto the Cuban teen’s face.

“I...I thought you were dead. I thought I was alone-”

“Can’t kill off a Strider that easily, Lance” The blond teen smirked, playfully knocking Lance in a shoulder with a loose fist. Lance tried smiling back, but it felt forced.

Here he was, with Dave, while his team was engaging the Galra. They couldn’t form Voltron without him, they were screwed. Guilt hung heavy in his gut. Somehow, this must be his fault. There must be something wrong with him if he was the only member of Voltron to get sucked into Sburb. 

He was weak.

“Nice PJs by the way, those new? Last I heard, Rose hauled you outta her window and took you for a joy ride”

“Y-Yah, they are. No idea why I get them now. But here they are, and goddamn, I look good in purple.” Lance laughed, taking the distraction gladly. 

“Won’t disagree with you there” Dave laughed, as he stepped over to his laptop. 

The room still stunk with blood, but Lance was controlling his nausea. Dave seemed ghostly. Paler than usual, that is. Lance reminded himself that while Dave came across as nonchalant, the guy was probably just as freaked out about seeing his own bloodied body in his bedroom. 

“So...last you heard I was around, you were talking to Rose?”

“Mh-mm, she just finished throwing a ball of yarn at my face, actually.”

“Classy”

“Effective though, I won't deny it”

“What are you working on in the game? Why are you awake on Derse?”

“That would be because of the ball of yarn thrown at my face. Rose woke me up here. Just finished having a sick dance party. Then I pestered John for a bit. Chased a crow out the window.” Dave answered, filling in some of the blanks. “Came back and now you’re here, and a dead me is here.”

Lance turned and gave the corpse a quick glance again. 

The dead Dave flickered. Then it was gone. 

What.  
“Is that supposed to happen?” Lance asked, quietly grateful to find that the gore and gut-wrenching smell had been zapped away as well.

“That...that happened while I was awake. I just realized. How...why...why would the body show up here on Derse and then nope the fuck out?” Dave exclaimed, now confused.

“Maybe...I’m seeing through the cracks?”

Dave took a moment to think, still absent-mindedly tapping away at his computer.

“Is Derse the only place you’ve been able to visit so far?” 

“Um...yah, I guess. Why?”

“Maybe it won’t be that way for long. Maybe you’ll properly get into the Medium, and and get to play and shit. Maybe you’re seeing things from my perspective in the game.” Dave mused, “Rose would know better. Should really go track her down again.”

Lance nodded in agreement. Despite her lengthy vocabulary and passive aggressive demeanor, Rose was smart. Really fucking smart, and she knew it. Lance liked that about the blonde chick. Reminded him of Pidge, in a way.

“So have you tried it?”

“Tried...what?”

“Leaving Derse, bro. You said you can’t wake up, but can you move around?”

Lance’s eyes widened at the realization. When he’d tried to leave Derse in the past, he never woke up, but he would MOVE. To Dave’s bedroom, that first time. Could he go farther? Get off this purple rock?

...Did he really want to? 

“I...don’t know. Worth a try, I guess.”

“Cool, ‘cause full disclosure, I have to wake up now. Peace out, bro”

And Dave’s face promptly slackened into slight mindlessness as his Derse self continued to click away online.

“WHAT?! NO, DAVE! Come back!” Lance yelled, ripping over to the blond teen with light feet. Rose had mentioned to him that Dave’s dream self continued to function, if minimally, while he was awake. Theory confirmed, Lance thought, as Dave refused to respond to the blue paladin waving a crazed hand in front of his face. 

It was as though the tables had been cruelly flipped - now Lance was the one being suddenly abandoned without explanation as Dave woke up somewhere else. Lance gave Dave a gentle shove, but this in turn earned him no reaction. Whatever Dave was up to, it was clearly more important than waking up on Derse for Lance. 

Lance kneaded his face with both hands, sighing quietly to himself as he tried to calm himself down. He could fly over to Rose, maybe she’d wake up. 

Or maybe Dave had a point, and he should try taking control of his surroundings. 

Stepping over a soundboard and toeing through a maze of wires on the red floor, Lance quickly made it make to Dave’s bed, sat down, and drew himself into a cross-legged position. 

Derse was low and thrumming in his veins, a familiar but unwelcome sensation to the blue paladin. He closed his eyes and huffed out a tense breath. He thought of the crisp, quiet mornings in the early hours of the dawn at the beach. He thought of stargazing on the roof of the flight simulation facility at the Garrison. He thought of walking through the faded blue holomaps Coran projected in the Learning Commons aboard the Castle to help him learn new galaxies by both sight and name. 

Anything to bring his racing heartbeat down.

The way he practiced with his friends during team bonding exercises.

The way Blue had taught him to.

Something was different this time, as Lance tried to pull himself away from Dave’s obnoxiously red room. He could feel Derse ebbing in his mind, until he was an empty vessel drifting at sea. There was no bed beneath his legs. No colour behind his eyelids. No breath in his lungs.

Until, in a flash of blinding blue, there was.

He was standing on a massive rock. An asteroid, more precisely. Lance’s heart froze as his eyes locked onto what he recognized as Derse and its moon hanging thousands of kilometers away in the blackness. 

“Why am I here?!” Lance shouted questioningly, to no one but himself.

“To get to your Planet, paladin”

Lance’s limbs solidified like stone. He was not alone here after all. Spinning around, Lance startled as he saw an odd, hovering figure behind him. Blue, and humanoid in shape, aside from the creature’s torso tapering down into a ghost-like appendage, floating a couple feet off the ragged ground of the asteroid.

That, and it had a lion head.

“BLUE?!?!” Lance exclaimed, hoping to whatever god might be out there that this was in fact some version of his Lion.

“Sort of” The ghost like cat thing replied with a smile. Or, at least what qualified for a smile when bearing a lion’s mouth. “You can call me Bluesprite”

Lance was shocked by the development, initially happy, but caution crept back into his bones.

“Blue...sprite? Like, video game kind of sprite?”

“Precisely that kind” Bluesprite replied, with a slow nod. Lance couldn’t sense any danger, no threat to his well being from the- whatever it was. But he knew deep in his gut that this was too good to be true, and that this wasn’t his Blue.

“Why can’t I feel you, in my mind?” Lance asked, still airing on the side of caution.

“Because I am not bonded with you. I am merely a projection of your Lion, fused with an un-prototyped Kernelsprite.” It replied, extending its clawed ghost hands. “Essentially, I am your guide.”

“Guide to where, exactly?” Lance questioned, arms folded across his purple-clad chest. 

“To your planet, young paladin.”

A circular web expanded into the empty space above their heads, blue and pulsating with light. A simplistic mandala, undulating between different designs as he contemplated it. 

“So...you know all about the game?” Lance asked hopefully.

“I said I’m a guide, Lance, I never said I was helpful.”

Fuckin’ sassed by a lion sprite.

“What I can say, however, is that you need to pass through that gate to get to the Medium, and your planet.”

“I thought I was already in the Medium?” Lance replied, getting confused.

“You’re in their Medium, not yours.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that your world, the Land of Depth and Currents, already lies within your original reality.”

Lance suddenly grinned in understanding. 

“So that’s a portal back to my team?”

“Something like that” Bluesprite replied, flicking an ear. 

“Then what are we waiting for?! Let’s go!”

With a jump, Lance kicked off into the air and floated up to the Gate, Bluesprite close on his heels. A moment of lightheaded-ness. Then he was unceremoniously plopped out of a new sky into the tumultuous waves of a familiar cerulean planet. 

***

Blinking, Lance was back in his Lion, with Blue, staring out at the ripped gash in spacetime. 

“Lance, you okay?” Shiro called over the comms. “You went offline for a sec”

“Y-Yah, m’fine. Just blacked out. What is...that. That rip. Did the Glara do it?”

“They definitely hand some kind of hand in it” Pidge replied, “Are you sure you’re alright, Lance? The energy readings went off the charts - how are you conscious here?”

“I...don’t know. I don’t. But I didn’t go to Derse I just kind of...drifted for a while. Then it was all white, and I was awake.” Lance replied honestly, quietly glad to still be with his team.

“Maybe the temporal energy isn’t affecting you anymore” Hunk offered, piloting the yellow Lion closer to lance and Blue. 

Lance wanted to believe it, but the hollowness in his gut encouraged him otherwise. Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t just him anymore. Something was different.

“Well whatever it is, it’s convenient,” Keith interrupted, “Galra fighter class ships, headed our way”  
Lance drew his attention back to the windshield display, and his blood roared in his veins as an organised swarm of small, single-manned ships raced towards them. Time for battle.

“Team, on me!” Shiro ordered, urging Sora forward with practiced hands. “Standard formation, don’t stray from your positions. We’ll hold off this hoard individually, then form Voltron after breaking through their wall”

“Yessir, copy that, Shiro sir” Lance replied, letting the thrill of combat take over his mood.

There was something so clean about space battle. So easy, and seemingly inconsequential. No visible blood to cloud your conscience when you took down an enemy. It made it easy to focus in and forget the lives you were taking.

Because that’s what they were doing - taking lives. Voltron was lethal, despite being justified in its destructive ability. Lance could tell himself that they were saving innocent lives. That the Galran soldiers’ lives were worth less than those they enslaved. And he believed it. Because he couldn’t afford not to. 

Dave’s bloodstained corpse flashed across his vision, and Lance barely dodged a shot of plasmafire. He pushed down the flashback, and let Blue draw him into battle. Focused. He was a pilot. He was a paladin of Voltron, in this moment, and nothing else. He was a member of a team.

He made the thought his mantra as he gunned down a dozen fighters with a sweep of Blue’s ice beam. He spun her tail canon in steady whips and took down another several Galra fighter ships that had managed to make it to his peripheral vision. 

Lance wasn’t sure what this Admiral Tass guy was playing at, or what he was hoping to achieve by the show of his weapon’s strength. Ripping open the blackness of space, while terrifying, had not halted Voltron in anyway, nor had it pulled Lance from Blue.

Greater plans were at play here, and Lance hated feeling out of the loop.

Speaking of loops, he rolled Blue to the right as one of the larger tanker ships shot a beam of energy towards his Lion. Twisting back into position, Lance allowed himself a glance at his team. The comms were more or less quiet, save for the occasional quick warning, as they plowed through the first wave of ships. Hunk and Keith had broken off from their standard V formation and were tearing apart a second tanker ship with powerful blows.

Shiro had picked up their slack, with Pidge as support as they finished off the last of the smaller ships. Lance danced between the two groups, using his sharpshooting ability to watch his team’s back, blocking fire and returning it aggressively when necessary.

Allura brought the Castle in tightly behind them, backing the paladins’ movements and solidifying their position in battle. Slowly but surely, they approached the main hoard of assault ships.

At the dismantlement of the first wave, Shiro called them into action.

“Bring it in team, let’s form Voltron!”

***

Somewhere, in the murky depths of a dark sea, a monstrosity stirred. 

Among the ashy currents of the sea floor, rifts opens and ground shut, regurgitating black smoke into the heavily salted water and revealing the heat of a molten core. Nutrient-deprived creatures greedily slunk along the borders of the open rifts, devouring the raw materials brought up from the seismic activity. They gorged themselves on the thin flesh of any life unlucky enough to have been boiled alive from the sporadic geyser activity.

The behemoth shifted its mighty head as its sleep lightened, de-housing the grisly, barnacled structures that had crept monuments up the sides of his scaled head while he’d slept. 

A reckoning was coming, and it’s name was Lance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: So I lost the next chapter - oops. I'm in the process of rewriting it haha. Will have it up before the end of the weekend. Sorry! :/
> 
> So yahhh if it wasn't overly clear in this chapter - Lance has splintered into two versions of himself, a derse dreamer and a pilot ;)
> 
> it's really fucking hard to fit all this together as canonically as possible, so please forgive any massive changes in homestuck canon events. For the most part, everything is happening in order I think haha. More will be revealed about the Scratch that happened in Lance's reality later down the road, it wasn't really discussed in this chapter since it was so fast-moving.
> 
> Also Lance has a Laaaaaaand yay and a spriiiite yay haha  
> Disclaimer: Sburb dynamics will be different for Lance, namely he will not collect Grist and such. More will be revealed later ;)
> 
> Thanks again for all the <3
> 
> -GK


	11. Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance begins to explore the Land of Depth and Currents, and makes an interesting discovery.
> 
> Conversely, Lance continues to fight the Galra tooth and nail up in space, but to what end?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY so I severely underestimated how annoying it was going to be to rewrite this chapter...sorry XD but for what it's worth, I'm happier with this version - thanks for your patience!
> 
> ALSO I finally got a tumblr and started a shitty blog (~Space Embrace~), you can find me @graphite-katanas. Requests for Cats (9 'lines' of prompted writing) are open - your choice of character (s) and scenario - in any fandom FOR FREE. Message me for more info :)
> 
> LASTLY big thanks again to all you cool kids out there who support the fic by leaving comments and kudos, it's awesome :D 
> 
> space embrace,
> 
> -GK

Falling is a peculiar sensation.

The last time Lance had fallen, it had been from Derse’s uncaring sky, laced with the dizzying movement of purple buildings rushing past him.

This time, as the blue paladin was jettisoned into the atmosphere of the oceanic planet, the fluttering in his gut lessened as seconds of weightlessness flew past him. Falling didn’t feel like falling when you had no surrounding objects to compare it to. Lance had learned that during the evacuation simulations at the Garrison.

Granted, he hadn’t expected the Gate to drop him off - literally - at his planet right off the bat.

The Cuban teen allowed himself a few startled yells as the deep blue of the planet’s all-encompassing waters grew closer. He flailed for a few seconds before finding stability in an horizontal star position, with his arms outstretched and his fingers splayed against the solid air.  
If he had been able to look up, he’d have seen the Gate close. He’d had seen the ominous, angular profiles of warships drawn across the upper atmosphere. 

It wasn’t until Lance started approaching the half-kilometre mark that he finally pulled himself upwards into a pencil position, with his legs crossed around each other as securely as he could manage. 

This should really kill him.

Under any other circumstance, his limbs would be ripped off from the force of the impact. 

But Lance couldn’t bring himself to believe it, not with Bluesprite calmly plummeting downwards beside him. An unspoken trust was growing between them, and Lance couldn’t tell if it was natural or ‘scripted’ - but he didn’t care.

Because it felt nice having someone else at the wheel.

He didn’t know how long they’d freefallen for. Something stupid like two minutes.

When Lance hit the water, it was a nerve-wracking meld of the mammalian diving reflex and self-admitted excitement that locked the air in his lungs. They torpedoed downwards, deep into the cold, salinated water. 

Halfway through the descent, Lance realized that he’d need to get back to the surface - to breathe. As his movement slowed with the drag of the water, Lance pushed and pulled at the ocean to move himself upward toward the surface. It felt ridiculously far away.

Because it was ridiculously far away.

Sensing his panic, Bluesprite drifted over to Lance with an alien grace, and gripped him by the shoulder with a massive, clawed paw. Held in place, Lance looked at her incredulously. His lungs ached with the need for new air, and he squirmed from her grasp to continue his failing ascent. A few moments later, he convulsed, the dead air in his lungs driven out of him in pulsing intervals - and it was resoundly terrifying. 

But his vision never clouded. Never faded at the edges. Lance was empty, yet fully conscious. He hung there, in the quiet of the water, maybe in shock or maybe in confusion. Maybe, in both. 

He chest rose, and then fell, despite his closed airway. His eyes were open and fully functional in the cold, dusky water. His fingers and toes weren’t numbing at the extreme temperatures, and as he traced them through the water, Lance saw a semi-transparent film webbed between the small appendages. 

“You are adapting, Lance. Be patient, soon you will be able to navigate this place with a practised ease.”

Lance didn’t reply, too busy taking a mental inventory of his changing body. With his mouth closed against the harsh water, Lance was breathing. He was breathing through several slits carving themselves on both sides of his ribcage, peeling open between his intercostal muscles. Lance lifted and removed his purple pajama shirt, which floated upward easily with the support of the ocean, and trailed a webbed hand across his newly forming gills.

Lance didn’t question how it was possible. How or why it had happened. 

If it was permanent. 

There wasn’t much of a point, really. Bluesprite wouldn’t have been able to give him a straight answer anyways.

After taking a few minutes to marvel at, and adjust to, his changing body, Lance finally spoke. The smooth, silky texture of his voice underwater gave him goosebumps.

“Okay...so...I’m a C-list mermaid. Awesome. That sounded sarcastic but I meant it this is actually pretty cool.” He started, smiling sheepishly at Bluesprite. “So I take it that there’s no land above sea level?”

“Correct” The Lion sprite replied, drifting closer to the blue paladin.

“Well is there anyone here? This place looks dead” Lance questioned, gesturing to the empty expanse of ocean around them. The surface looked to be at least a few hundred metres above them, the orientation onlyapparent thanks to the soft glow of surface light penetrating the upper levels of the ocean. Despite the distance, the water was fairly clear. Lance imagined he could see at least a few hundred metres in every which direction, but with no objects to compare his field of vision to, it was a guess. 

“That, paladin, is for you to figure out.” Bluesprite replied cryptically.

“Okay fine, so why am I here then?” Lance countered, struggling to find the right question that wouldn’t hit a deadend answer.

Bluesprite smiled, and promptly vanished. “I will be there when you need me.”

“W-What if I need you now - you stupid cat!” Lance exclaimed, to the voided space where his sprite used to be.

A pause.

“Well...fuck this.” 

Lance tried to pull back, like in a dream, and move somewhere else. To wake up, maybe. But this was different.

This was not a dream.

After hanging in the empty cold for a few moments, devoid of any kind of plan, Lance finally decided to move around manually. To explore a bit. He wasn’t scared. No more than usual, anyway. To put the sentiment simply, the blue paladin didn’t feel in danger.

If it weren’t for the complete and utter lack of life around him, Lance would’ve found more enjoyment in the way he could pull himself forward in the water with an effortless grace. Would’ve rolled and flipped experimentally, exploring his new abilities for the sheer fun of it. But he didn’t. Despite the loneliness of it all, he felt oddly at peace, like he belonged. Lance liked that feeling.

He really shouldn’t have been surprised that his world, his ‘Land’, would have something to do with water. Coran had taught him within the first few weeks of joining the Voltron team that his Lion’s classic elemental tie was with water. It explained why she’d been so joyful, and efficiently deadly, in the oceans of the mermaid planet that one time.

Lance wished he was back there now. With the vibrant corals and exotic fish, the welcoming populace, and the beautiful mermaids. He loved that planet.

Minus the manipulative and carnivorous seaweed snake monster thing. That part sucked. 

Lance kept his thoughts light as he continued to swim outward, sticking to a single direction in the hopes of eventually coming across something, or someone. He didn’t know how much time had passed. The sensation akin to when he zoned out during lectures at the Garrison, snapping back into context whenever the prof raised their voice to prove a point. Leaving Lance with zero idea of how much material he’d missed. 

Hunk was his saving grace, giving Lance his notes and studying with him in the evenings.

Hunk.

Lance pushed down the hollow feeling in his gut that followed missing someone. 

They were above him, right now. Engaged in battle. Plasmafire painting the black expanse of space alive and deadly with colour. Lance knew with a sinking feeling that they couldn’t form Voltron without him, and a wave of guilt washed over him again. At least they knew that he couldn’t control it, when he left.

Or maybe he could, but was too weak to fight back the attraction to Derse. 

Lance sighed, or, sighed as well as he could while underwater. The action only pushed cool water from his face momentarily, offering no bubbles to tickle his nose. The Cuban teen felt hot with shame. His limbs tingled as warmth hinted at the skin.

Lance realised with a start that it wasn’t self deprecation that was heating him, but the ocean itself. 

As he stared out into the deep blue space around him, Lance spotted a faint movement of particles in front and all around him. A steady stream spiralling up from the deeper depths of the ocean, pushing Lance upwards with gentle influence. The water was warm. Noticeably warmer than that outside the current, and Lance grew hopeful. Maybe this was a sign of life, pointing him closer to the dark, obscure lower levels of the ocean. 

Lance hadn’t consider travelling downward.

Maybe there was no shallow water life on this planet.

Grinning, and with new determination blooming inside him, Lance drew himself out of the soft current and swam downwards beside it. Following it back to its hidden roots.

His feet long since grown webbed and flipper like, Lance propulsed himself deeper and deeper, the salt water encasing him growing colder and colder with his descent.

But Lance was not cold, a fire burned brightly inside him, metaphorical and all-consuming. 

***

Lance grinned to himself as he piloted Blue closer to his team, the Lions humming powerfully with such close proximity to each other. The blue paladin warmed as they prepared to form Voltron, his skin prickling with determination and the sudden rush of excitatory hormones in his body.

The Cuban teen could feel the tethers of energy connecting him to his friends and their Lions, and he opened himself mentally to their presence as the bond brightened aggressively. His eyes closed, and Lance’s movement of Blue was automatic and smooth, fluid as if human error had been completely erased from his reaction time. 

He felt his Lion welcome her sisters into his mind, followed by the other paladins, and Lance grew lightheaded in a familiar and practised way. 

When he opened his eyes, more out of curiosity than necessity, the blue paladin whooped over the comms encouragingly as Voltron emerged, forged from their collective minds.

“Time to kick some serious Galra ass!”

Lance could hear the scolding pushing at Shiro’s lips, and for a moment he almost forgot the battle in place of laughing at Space Dad. Almost. Hunk audibly sighed, the breath shaking his nerves slightly. Keith and Pidge were quiet, but Lance could feel their silent agreement, each of their faces drawn in pinched focus.

Voltron brutally swept into battle after forming, the flared jets on it’s back driving them towards the next wave of ships. They plowed through the newly congregated front line, and shot lethal fire into the two nearest warships - the resulting explosions tossed the initial ship debris outward in wide sweeping waves. 

From what Lance could tell, fifteen warships still remained, each swarmed with individual fighter ships, and forming a protective grid around the main vessel with the enlarged, sloping hull. It was odd. The main ship. The destroyer class vessel. It hadn’t fired any beam, or emitted any visual attack.

Maybe the space onboard wasn’t being used for a physical weapon, temporal or not, but something else. 

Something responsible for ripping open spacetime.

Between the throws and battle and the heavy hum of shared thoughts in his head, Lance didn’t have much time to puzzle any further. A concentrated shot of plasmafire nicked Voltron in the left shoulder, and another hit heavily on its right hip. Lance’s body shook with the impact, but the motion only increased the steady confidence in his hands. The damage wasn’t extensive, they’d endured much worse.

Which is why it was concerning.

“They’re playing with us” Keith stated over the comms, drawing Red’s sword with a decisive twist of his bayard. The team ripped a lethal gash in the starboard flank of the closest warship, sending chunks of alien alloys and constructive material flying in the cold expanse of space. A moment later, due to some type of fuel rupture, the vessel exploded entirely, voiding several of its own supportive fighterships. 

“Or...stalling us, perhaps” Pidge chimed in, as Voltron gained another kilometre of ground.

“Is no one going to talk about that massive fucking tear the Galra just ripped into existence?!”

Lance wasn’t used to hearing Hunk swear. Hunk was the kind of person who saved swearing for when a toe got stubbed or a lunch was forgotten. Very rarely did the Hawaiian teen voice profanity as an adjective. 

It definitely spoke to the severity and overall confusing not-good-ness of the situation. Lance sent his buddy a hug through the bond, or, at least what qualified as a hug concerning astrophysical mind-melds.

“There’s...not much to say, paladins.” Coran replied over the comms, “The Castle’s scanners are at a complete loss of how to interpret the data. All I can say is that spacetime is NOT behaving normally in close proximity to the tear itself.”

“What Coran means to say is that you all must steer clear of it for now - until we’ve more information.” Allura interrupted, her voice a deadly calm in the storm of battle. “If the Glara are responsible for this...I haven’t the slightest of how they did it.”

“If they’ve really got that kind of mojo, why not take us down on the spot?” Lance wondered aloud, voicing a shared thought.

“Maybe they want the Lions intact?” Hunk offered, cocking his head. “Plus, didn’t that Tass guy say that he wanted to hand us over to Zarkon for ‘execution’?”

“Maybe...still doesn’t explain the light show, though.” Lance frowned, in thought.

The tear stretched across seemingly empty space, running tangent to the cerulean plant’s curved horizon. If that’s what their weapon - or whatever it was - could do to ‘spacetime’, then Lance shrunk at the thought of what it could to to a mere planet. A ship. The Castle.

Voltron.

Doubt spilt into their minds, like ink dropping into a glass of otherwise clear water. The team’s focus was clouding with unsettling uncertainty.

“Well then, good thing Voltron can take down that Destroyer no sweat, regardless of tech -” Lance started, easing the tension and rallying his friends’ hope as they took down another web of fighter ships with a sweep of Hunk’s newly activated cannons. “because we have something they don’t”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that, Lance?” Keith asked, walking the thin line of sincerity and sarcasm. 

“My devilishly good looks?”

“Pffft-”

“Hunk’s A+ usage of the F-bomb? Pidge’s silent nerd rage? Shiro’s staggering parental abilities?”

Silence.  
“Unlimited passion, fueled by your edgy and relatable angst poetry?”

“I will stab you with this sword, Lance”

“What, and take out the best right leg of Voltron?”

“Enough, you two.” Shiro sighed, guiding the team through another stream of plasmafire. “We might not be taking damage, but your heads have got to be in the game. “Admiral Tass means business, we just need to figure out is angle”

It took a moment for them to realize the pause in the Galra’s assault.

“Speaking of,” Allura announced over the comms, “We’re being hailed, stand by for transmission.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALSO  
> If anyone ever needs music to help them concentrate on doing homework/drawing/writing or whatever, I HIGHLY recommend the youtube channel Pulse8. Basically uploads tons of hour-long lo-fi/instrumental stuff and it's gr8
> 
> speaking of music, throwback to Stephen's 'Crossfire' from a few years ago - it fits this crossover fic really well haha
> 
> :)


	12. Into the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance explores more of LODAC and comes across an unexpected ally.
> 
> Things heat up in space, with tension on both sides of the battlefield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hEYYY so I'm back with more voltronstuck yay :D
> 
> Thanks for all the support during my intermission, it was a very nice break. Now I'm ready to start uploading again! As you may have noticed, uploads will now be on Sundays :)
> 
> (Shameless self-advertising) I'm posting fanart and and funstuff on tumblr @graphite-katanas, come hang out if you want. Requests are open if you want me to write stuff on the side, see my blog for details.
> 
> <3333 
> 
> ~space embrace~
> 
> -GK

Admiral Tass stood ramrod straight in front of the telecom unit, body rigid and purposeful in placement. The way he was taught to many decacycles ago, as a first year cadet in the Institute. 

How far he has come since then.

Clawed fists curled tightly behind his back, the Admiral allowed himself the comfort of a small sigh.

Voltron wasn’t quite close enough. Not yet, or so Haggar told him. The whiny bitch.

Zalath Tass kept his temper low and quiet in his mind - now was not the time to lose focus, not with his master’s plan so near its completion, no matter how intolerable he found the druid’s presence aboard his ship.

That said, he had no issue using the fruits of her success.

The Scratch had been a false show of power, and a distraction, a fixed event in spacetime that he and his associates were more than happy to take advantage of for the sake of capturing Voltron. Ambassador Noir in particular had been adamant about using the event to Galra advantage.

Tass inferred that Noir had something to gain from Galra involvement. Something perhaps even Lord Voltron was unaware of, though it seemed unlikely that their obsidian-skinned associate had the wherewithal to outsmart an entire Empire. 

No matter.

The flight technician to his left signaled that the paladins were gaining proximity, and Tass smirked. He watched with a thin smile as Voltron grew nearer and nearer, the Admiral uncaring of his dying fleet.

It’s not as if the vessels were actually manned. 

This set up, this ambush of sorts, was born of his design, though admittedly with the help of Haggar and the druids. They wouldn’t have been able to channel Noir’s promised temporal energy without her. 

“Voltron is in range, Admiral”

“Very good, Commander.” Admiral Tass replied, his face growing relaxed with every passing successful second. “Hail the Castle of Lions, and establish the telecom link, I’d like to speak with the Princess and her circus of idiots.”

“Right away, Admiral”

Time to stall.

***

Lance blew out a few bubbles in frustration, still swimming his way down into the depths of the aquatic planet. The blue paladin couldn’t tell how long he’d been travelling downwards, but it was well long enough that he was beginning to grow tired.

Tired, and more than a little anxious.

The water around him, though growing warmer, was dark and grimy and harsh and not at all what he’d expected to find in the lower levels of a gorgeous cerulean world.

This water was far from that of Varadero. 

Lance’s vision had adjusted to the dark spreading around him, a protective, milky film spreading over his eyes to guard him from the heavy salt concentrations. He could still feel the gentle pull of the current rushing upward beside him, acting as the isolated teen’s only real landmark. Every so often he would zone out, vision fogging over in a passive way, until he’d jolt back into focus only to find that he’d drifted from the line of the current. 

After the third time he lost focus, Lance slowed himself to a stop and hung in the empty of the dark sea.

His ears popped painfully at the pressure from being so far down, and he grimaced. After a moment, the sensation subsided and Lance felt a little better. 

He’d never been scared of the dark, not really anyway, but there was something eerie about the velvety water surrounding him. He hadn’t planned on crying. On breaking down. But all of a sudden the pressure and uncertainty of it all swept over Lance in a quiet flood. He rubbed his hands into his face as his lips pulled back, ugly and curling into a sob. 

“W-Why me-” He whispered, to nothing in particular, “W-Why me, and why h-here?”

It was between the valleys of his webbed fingers that Lance finally saw it.

A light. 

Blue, and pulsing, and ovular in shape, hovering out in the distance below him. Lance hadn’t realized just how dark it truly was until he had the light to contrast it. Hope circling in his gut, Lance quickly set out towards the light, pulling himself through the murky darkness with strong hands and quick feet. 

Due to lack of reference, Lance couldn’t tell if the light was small because it was just really far away or if it was actually small in size and actually really close. 

His question was soon answered. As he swam, Lance began to make out organic webbing across the light’s surface, the lines akin to broken spiderwebs.

Or veins.

Lance realized too late his mistake, as a wide set of sickle-like teeth opened up in front of him, unseen jaws wide and gaping.

Horrified, Lance scrambled back as best he could, but not before he got a good glimpse of the gnarled monstrosity. It was a fish. A massive, deadly, disgusting looking fish, not unlike an angler from Earth, complete with a bio luminescent lure. 

Before the fish could rip into the Cuban teen, an unseen appendage wrapped itself around Lance’s ankle and dragged him downwards out of harm's way. He yelped in both surprise and pain at the touch, flailing in the dim light as he was yanked lower and lower into the ocean by some unseen creature.

Panic rose in his throat.

Up above him, the angler’s light lure wavered and then shot away - out of sight.

Darkness.

Darkness and quiet and something wrapped tightly around his leg, still insistently dragging him downward - until all of a sudden it wasn’t and Lance was just floating in the black.

And then the creature revealed itself.

Soft lights grew brighter in the space in front of the confused teen, outlining the form of a multiple-limbed..thing...hanging in the water.

It was small, with globular body about the size of the blue paladin’s chest and six lower limbs that behaved like tentacles. Lance couldn’t make out any eyes, or facial features.

It was just a glowy blob with sausage tentacle legs. A chubby squidish thing. Its bio luminescent skin, dotted at uneven intervals all over it’s hidden body, flickered around between blue, green, and yellow. 

Lance wasn’t scared of it. In fact, he realized, the blob must have just saved his life. 

“Um...Thank you..?” He began, unsure of himself. His voice a muddled echo underwater. “Do...do you speak?”

No reply.

“Well...thanks anyways. The name’s Lance” Balling up a fist, Lance brought his hand to his chest and jutted out his thumb, effectively pointing at himself. 

At the movement, the blobby squid shuddered and squirmed its many limbs, it’s dotted skin changing colours quickly like a strobe light. Lance figured it was out of excitement rather than fear or aggression. 

Maybe...it communicated with movement instead of speech? Or light? Or...or something that Lance couldn’t reciprocate.

“I’m sorry...I don’t know what that-”

Lance stopped, shocked.

His own skin - his human skin, or was it still human? - began glowing. Freckle-like specks of light pin pricked themselves all over his body, most small particles like dust or no bigger than the size of a pea. They seemed especially concentrated around his joints, coating his shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands, hips, knees, ankles and feet. 

Lance’s body shone his confusion to the blobby squidish thing, and it blossomed red in return. Something clicked in the blue paladin, and he was able to interpret the signals.

LOL U OK M8?

“W-What?!” Lance sputtered.

LMAO U LOOK P WEIRD MAN

WHO R U

UR NOT BLOBBISH

 

“Are-Are you seriously talking like that?”

LIKE WAT

“Like that!”

DIS HOW WE TALK MAN IDK

“Wait, there are more of you?”

YA DUH

“...Care to elaborate?”

WE DA BLOBS

DIS IS OUR HOME

U DUMB AF SWIMMIN UP 2 CHOMPY LIKE DAT

“Chompy?!”

YA CHOMPY

CHOMPYS R DICKS

ALWAYS TRYIN 2 EAT US BLOBS AN SHIT

Lance couldn’t stop shaking his head in bewilderment. This...blob...was talking the way his younger cousins text. The way Lance would to Pidge, just to piss her off. The way Coran sometimes did, totally unironically, to try and talk ‘more humanly’ after doing minimal research.

“...What’s your name?”

BLOB

Figures.

“Is everyone named Blob?”

YA DUH

“Right, duh.” Lance laughed, still confused. Oh well. At least he wasn’t alone anymore. He could finally stop tearing himself up about his teammates are start actually trying to solve this mystery of a world. 

Not like Bluesprite was any fucking help.

“So...where’s everyone else?”

@ HOME PROBS

OR SCAVENGING IDK THERES LOTS OF US

“Cool cool my dude, could you maybe take me home with you? I have nowhere to go...”

EXCUZ ME

I HAVE A BF

U JUST FAM-

“-No!! Not that kind of taking home, Jesus, I just need somewhere to go Blob. Could you please take me to your home so I can try and figure out what to do with myself? I have no idea where I am or where to go.”

OHHH RIP

YA COOL LOL

FOLLOW ME~

And so Lance followed.

***

Allura frowned as she accepted the transmission from the Galra fleet, an icy calm boiling in her veins.

Coran followed suite with an impressive bitch face, and for a moment Allura felt warmed by his reassuring presence. No matter what may lay ahead, at least she had a team.

“Admiral Tass, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Hmm…” He started, making a puzzled face, “...well that’d have to be either your unwavering ignorance or your team’s inherently imbecilic nature - take your pick, Princess.”

Before she could reply, another voice sounded over the telecom.

“Welllllll so far we’ve been beating your ass, so I’d back off on the name calling if I were you-”

“Enough, Lance!” Shiro chided, to Lance’s dismay.

Allura waited for Tass to react.

“Cute,” He began, voice heavy with belittlement. “But as you may have noticed, we seem to be at a stalemate.”

“What are you proposing?” Allura asked, willing the Admiral to get straight to the point.

“Something wonderful”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kinda short, pretty much just a quick check-in with everybody. Also ehehe jack noir and other antagonists will be appearing from now on, stay tuned for how they fit into this whole mess~
> 
> also rip is it bad that I love blob like I would my own child ahhhhh such cringy cringe i love them <33333
> 
> EDIT: CANCELLED
> 
> Sorry but I've dropped this fic...most of you probably noticed considering how long it's been since I've updated. I didn't mean to abandon this project, but to be honest I started to lose interest and things kinda spiralled down from there. Thanks for all the support on what I was able to complete. If anyone wants to continue it, dm me on tumblr? that'd be cool. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for everything :) Check out my other (completed) Lance fic, Invisible Burden. It's extremely whumpy. he gets hurt. a lot. and dies (but not really). happy ending I promise. 
> 
> this is ripley, signing off lmao
> 
> -GK


End file.
